19/02/2026
The work of Brazilian artist Laura Lima has always been deeply concerned with@living things, with the vibration, unpredictability, and ongoing transformation of animate matter. Across three decades, her practice has traced the thresholds between bodies, creatures, environments, and the forces that shape them.
Communal Nests for Windows, Balconies, Versndas, Gardens, and Forests presented at Goodman Gallery in London coincides with Drawing Drawing at the Institue of Contemporary arts, both forming her debut solo presentations in London.
Much of Lima’s approach stems from her background in philosophy and her formative art studies at the Escola de Artesian Visuais do Parque Lage; her work often defying categorisations that those in the global art industry commonly reach for. She does not make “series” of work - all her artworks are somehow organically connected.
At the heart of the exhibition is a large group of interconnected Communal Nests, which, as the title suggests, are ideally to be situated close to or within Windows, Balconies, Verandas, Gardens, and Forests, although here they happen to be installed in a gallery. Lima transforms a deliberately neutral space into what she calls a garden, filled with “architectural-sculptures” offering a new kind of habitat for a variety of species - birds, squirrels, rodents and even their predators.
The nests are made out of straw hats, sticks, adorned perches deliberately inviting interaction, and transformation. With the straw hats, she takes something designed for and by humans and with a simple fold recreates it as a potential home for smaller creatures. “The works inhabit the space to be harvested by the public”, explains Lima, “like a garden that invades it naturally. Each piece is a florescence that maintains a relationship with the whole, forming one large communal nest made of many communal nests. When removed and taken to the places - a garden, a balcony - they continue to offer shelter and use to other beings, like displaced flowers that continue to live in new environments.
