Vanessa da Silva: Roda Viva

15 Feb-31 May 2025

Overview

Roda Viva is the first extensive presentation of Vanessa da Silva’s work in the UK, and her first institutional show. 

Drawing inspiration from da Silva’s own Brazilian heritage – family history, music, dance, and the legacy of Brazilian artists such as Helio Oiticica and Lygia Clark – her work explores themes around identity, displacement, ancestry, destiny and memory. 

The title, which translates to ‘live wheel’, references life in motion or the movement in life. The show is centred around the various cycles of lives, the histories carried from generation to generation, and the interconnectedness of past, present and future. 

However the title also references the ‘roda de samba’ (circle of samba or circle of dance), a term used to describe the circular dance in celebration of various occasions in Brazil such as celebrations and Ameridian or Afro-Brazilian religious ceremonies, but also practised at random. Typically only the women dance, taking turns, as they are surrounded by others dancing in a circle and clapping their hands. The choreography is often spontaneous and is based on movements of the feet, legs and hips. One of the most typical moves is where the dancer invites her successor into the circle’s centre, a metaphor for the continuation of life and tradition passed on to the younger generation. 

Challenging the formality of the space, colour, rhythm and movement combine to create a joyous visual and spatial experience for the audience, celebrating life and the expression of freedom. Visitors are invited to navigate and interact with the sculptural forms, and in doing so, to reconsider our bodies as a permanent condition of experience and constituent of perceptual openness to the world, where spirit and reason connect, exchange, decode, fluctuate, and make sense of all things worldly, and not. 

Roda Viva is curated by Kalliopi Tspini Kolaza, Curator of Visual Art, Mostyn. The exhibition is kindly supported by The Foundation Foundation, The Ampersand Foundation and the Henry Moore Foundation.