Lucia Nogueira

Born 1950 | Goiânia
Lived and worked London, Died 1998

Lucia Nogueira was born and raised in Brazil and later based in London. The 14th Gwangju Biennale brings together a significant body of sculptures and drawings by Nogueira that explore the connections between object and language. The works make frequent allusions to the fragility of the human body and its relationship to space. Nogueira’s practice was primarily centred on her poetic sculptures and installations, which incorporate found, broken, and abandoned objects. She subtly transformed these materials, imbuing them with a corporeal and psychological resonance. Running throughout her haunting and poignant oeuvre are a number of coexistent dualities: fear and desire, attraction and repulsion, order and chaos. Drawing was also of crucial importance to Nogueira and served as an act of discovery that often aided in her sculptural works. Her early drawings are primarily figurative, displaying bodies that are elongated, headless, doubled, and occasionally maimed or obscured from view. While many later drawings are closely related to her three-dimensional works, others feature recurring motifs of an array of animals and quotidian objects that simultaneously evoke a sense of playfulness and foreboding.

Lucia Nogueira, Installation view, 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023). Image courtesy Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Photo: glimworkers