Installation view of Roda Viva by Vanessa da Silva at Mostyn Gallery © Rob Battersby Vanessa da Silva's artistic practice is deeply rooted in themes of identity, displacement, ancestry, and memory, explored through a dynamic interplay of sculpture, textiles, and performance. Born in Brazil and based in London, da Silva navigates the complexities of belonging and transformation, often drawing from her own experiences of migration. Her work embraces movement—both physical and metaphorical—reflecting on the fluidity of cultural identities and histories.
Her latest exhibition, Roda Viva, marks her largest solo show in the UK to date, recently opened at Mostyn in Wales. Taking its title from a phrase that evokes life’s continuous motion, Roda Viva is inspired by the cycles of existence and the ways in which past, present, and future remain intricately connected. The exhibition is shaped by Brazilian cultural traditions, from the communal energy of roda de samba—a ritual of dance, rhythm, and collective expression—to the experimental legacies of artists like Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark. Through vibrant sculptural installations and large-scale textile works, da Silva creates an immersive environment that invites movement, interaction, and reflection. A key element of the exhibition is its engagement with the body, both as a site of personal and ancestral memory and as an active participant in space. Biomorphic sculptures become wearable costumes in a series of performances, underscoring da Silva's ongoing interest in the intersection of art and embodied experience.
In this conversation, she reflects on the personal and cultural influences that shaped Roda Viva, exploring how memory, movement, and ancestral traditions intertwine in her practice. She discusses the ways in which her work navigates collective and individual histories, the fluid relationship between past and present, and the significance of the body as a site of memory and expression.
Jelena Martinovic: Your practice often integrates themes of identity, displacement, ancestry, destiny and memory. How have your personal experiences as a Latin American immigrant to the UK shaped your approach to exploring these themes?
Vanessa da Silva: My personal experiences as a Latin American immigrant to the UK informs the themes around my work. Moving from Brazil to the UK created a rupture—a space between cultures—that has become both a point of tension and a fertile ground for exploration in my work. This sense of in-betweenness pushes me to question how identities are formed, unformed, and constantly reshaped through movement, adaptation, and the act of remembering.
Displacement, for me, is not just physical; it's emotional and psychological. It affects how we relate to our bodies, to landscapes, to language. That's why my practice often engages with the body—not only as a vessel but as a site where histories, memories, and cultural codes are inscribed and can be reimagined. Through sculptural forms, performances, and installations, I explore how bodies carry ancestral traces, how they embody resilience, and how they navigate spaces of belonging and otherness.
Ancestry is a thread that ties me to histories that are both personal and collective. It's about acknowledging the multiplicity of origins, the layered narratives that exist within us, and how these shape our sense of destiny—not as a fixed path but as something fluid and open to transformation. Memory, in this context, is an active force—a way of resisting erasure and asserting presence.
Living between different cultural contexts has given me a perspective that is simultaneously rooted and fluid. It allows me to embrace contradictions, to hold space for complexity, and to create work that invites reflection on how identities are constantly in flux, shaped by both visible and invisible forces.
JM: Your work often carries echoes of Brazilian cultural traditions and landscapes, drawing inspiration from your family history, music and dance. How do you navigate translating these influences into a contemporary art context while maintaining their essence?
VDS: This exhibition marks the first time I am exploring figuration, although one of the textile pieces was shown at Casa Encendida in Madrid a year ago, weaving in threads of my family history and a deep longing for home. Although I have lived in London for 23 years, Brazil will always be my home and my reference point.
Exploring ancestry has been a recurring theme since my MA at the Royal College of Art. However my practice is not confined to this narrative alone. While I often abstract forms, I often find that these abstractions reveal faces, arms, legs and imaginary extensions of body parts.
My ideas come from where I come from, both geographically and emotionally. I continually look back to my origins to draw inspiration- from the vibrant colours of Brazilian street culture and landscape to the organic forms found in nature. My work doesn't aim to replicate these influences literally; instead, I'm interested in how their essence—rhythms, movements, textures, and emotional resonances—can be reinterpreted through form, materiality, and spatial dynamics.
JM: Roda Viva, your largest UK solo exhibition to date, explores the cycles of life and the interconnectedness of past, present, and future. How do you approach these temporal threads in your work, and what role do generational histories play in shaping the exhibition’s narrative?
VDS: In Roda Viva, I approach the cycles of life through a mix of intuition and reflection, allowing personal histories and spontaneous experiences to shape the work in unexpected ways. The exhibition is the most personal I've done to date, and it wasn’t something I planned consciously—it unfolded organically, almost as if the work guided me toward it.
A specific trip I took played a pivotal role in this process. I brought back a series of photographs without any intention of using them in my work. At the time, they were just images, personal keepsakes. But as I began developing Roda Viva, these photos resurfaced, carrying with them emotional weight and connections I hadn’t fully understood. Some of the people in these images are family members I never met—individuals who passed away before I was born. Yet, through the act of making, especially during the long, laborious process of sewing and stitching I felt like I was spending time with them, forming an intimate dialogue across time.
This sense of connectivity and the trajectory of our lives became central to the exhibition. The use of mesh transparent fabric speaks directly to this idea. It allows figures to be seen through other figures, creating layers where presence and absence coexist. Transparency isn't just a material choice; it's a metaphor for the way family histories and generational experiences overlap—how the past is never fully gone but lives on through us, subtly shaping who we are.
Roda Viva isn't solely about generational lineage. It's about life in motion—the wheel of life that keeps turning, changing, transforming. The works reflect this fluidity, not tied to linear narratives but to the rhythms of memory, intuition, and the invisible threads that connect us across time and space. Ultimately, it's an exploration of how we carry those who came before us, not just in our stories but in the very fabric of our being.
JM: The exhibition's title references the movement of life, but also the communal Roda de Samba. Could you share more about the cultural significance of the roda de samba in Brazil and how it resonates with the broader themes explored in this exhibition?
VDS: One of the defining characteristics of the Samba of Roda is the gathering of participants in a circle, referred to as roda. People in the circle dance, clapping their hands and singing. The choreography is often improvised and based on the movements of the feet, legs and hips while samba music is performed.
The Samba de Roda, which involves music, dance and poetry, is a popular festive event that developed in the State of Bahia, it drew heavily on the dances and cultural traditions of the region's African slaves. The performance also included elements of Portuguese culture, such as language, poetry, and certain musical instruments. At first a major component of regional popular culture among Brazilians of African descent, the Samba de Roda was eventually taken by migrants to Rio de Janeiro, where it influenced the evolution of the urban samba that became a symbol of Brazilian national identity in the twentieth century.
The dance is performed on various occasions, such as popular Catholic festivities or Afro-Brazilian religious ceremonies, but is also executed in more spontaneous settings.
When you enter the exhibition the first thing you encounter is four large textile pieces hanging from the ceiling depicting important people in my life installed in a circle, a roda, a wheel. In the second room of the exhibition there is a group of sculptures, which to me are more like abstracted bodies which are 'dancing' together in the room. Here I'm thinking about festivities in Brazil where the 'roda de samba' happens, like during the carnival or New Year's celebrations.
The roda de samba is more than a musical gathering; it is a circle of people connecting through joy, sound, and vibrations. This collective experience fosters a sense of belonging and community, where participants transcend the everyday through rhythm and dance, entering different states of consciousness. The circular formation symbolises unity, continuity, and the cyclical nature of life, resonating deeply with the broader themes of transformation, connection, and cultural memory explored in this exhibition.
JM: Your exhibition combines a range of mediums, from hanging textiles to sculptural elements that challenge the formality of the space. How do you approach the display of these works to create a dynamic interaction between the works, space and audience?
VDS: All the works in the show share a common creative language. Whether textiles, sculptures, or drawings, they are connected through a shared sense of tactility, colour, movement, and transparency. The exhibition brings together a variety of mediums and textures, inviting audiences to engage closely with the details—like the contrast between smooth and grainy surfaces in the sculptures, the dialogue between the stitches in the textiles and the fine threads woven into the sand sculptures, or the delicate tulle holding together beans and rice in the sculptures and in the framed textiles.
Working on a human scale creates an inherently compelling dynamic between the sculptures and the audience. The sculptures act as extensions of the human body, while the floating, transparent textiles depict life-sized figures, fostering a more immediate and personal connection. This interplay between form, scale, and material invites viewers to navigate the space in an intimate, embodied way, where the works don’t just occupy the space—they activate it.
JM: Visitors are invited to navigate and interact with the sculptural forms, encouraging a reconsideration of the body as a permanent condition of experience. How does your personal connection with your own body influence the way you conceptualize and create your work? Also, in what ways does the viewer’s body shape the experience and interaction with the work?
VDS: Throughout my work - I question how our body stores experiences, experiences we internalise and keep in our bodies, skin we shed, layers revealed from the inside. How our bodies change throughout the years, how we adapt, change, evolve etc..
I often start with the body—thinking about how it moves, how it holds memory—and then expand into abstraction. Sculptural forms might echo the fluidity of a dance gesture or the organic shapes of natural landscapes, but they are distilled to capture a feeling rather than a direct representation. Colour and texture also play a crucial role, evoking sensory connections to specific places or atmospheres mostly from my upbringing in Brazil.
JM: You often collaborate with dancers and performers, integrating movement and the body into your work. How does this performative element expand the narratives of your sculptures, and what role does collaboration play in shaping these experiences?
VDS: My approach to integrating movement and the body into my work isn't about simply activating the sculptures through performance. Instead, it's about continuing the ideas embedded in the works, expanding them into the realm of the body to bring a sense of liveness. This process allows the sculptures' narratives to evolve beyond their static forms, adding new layers of meaning that emerge through embodied interaction.
When these ideas are explored through movement, you discover things that exist beyond the sculptures themselves—sensations, gestures, and relationships that deepen the work's complexity. Collaboration plays a key role in this. Working with dancers, choreographers, and performers allows me to relinquish a degree of control and give agency to others. Their interpretations, movements, and contributions introduce unexpected elements, shaping the work in ways I couldn’t anticipate on my own.
Even during the creation process, I often try out forms on my own body, making shapes that respond to its movements and contours. This process of "trying on" sculptures creates an ongoing dialogue where bodies and objects continuously inform each other.
While sculptures are traditionally static and untouchable, I'm interested in subverting that expectation—bringing out a sense of playfulness and inviting an active, sensorial engagement. There's a nod to artists like Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica in my work, particularly in how they explored wearables and interactive pieces that demand physical participation. Similarly, I want people to not just view the sculptures but to feel them—whether through movement, touch, or simply sensing how their bodies relate to the forms in space. This aliveness is what makes the work continue to grow beyond its material boundaries.
