After moving to São Paulo in 1986, Lidia Lisbôa worked in a haute couture studio and, in 1991, began her artistic production. She studied Metal Engraving at the Lasar Segall Museum, contemporary sculpture and ceramics at the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture and Ecology (MuBE) and at the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts. In 1997, she participated in the group exhibition “Tridimensional”, at the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture and Ecology (MuBE) and, in the same year, she held her first individual exhibition at the Goethe Institute, in São Paulo. In 1998, the artist received the Maimeri Prize – 75 years, granted by the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts. In 2020, Lisbôa exhibited at Centro Cultural São Paulo and at the 12th Bienal do Mercosul, in 2021, she was part of the group exhibitions “Enciclopédia Negra”, at Pinacoteca de São Paulo; “Carolina Maria de Jesus: a Brazil for Brazilians”, at the Moreira Salles Institute; and the show “The Substance of the Earth: The Sertão”, curated by Simon Watson, which first took place at the National Museum of the Republic with a tour at the Slag Gallery in New York.
The first room of the exhibition at the Millan Gallery will feature works from the series entitled “Tetas que debrám ao mundo”, whose production began in 2011. These are large textile sculptures that are raised to the ceiling and fall close to the ceiling. floor, in a way that refers to female breasts. The exhibition also features drawings by the artist whose forms refer to her sculptural works, in particular, the Cupinzeiros series. In this series, also featured in the exhibition, the ceramic sculptures establish formal and material relationships with the termite mounds that occupy the landscape of the Brazilian countryside and that refer to childhood memories of Lisbon.
The artist works with different materials and techniques, such as drawing, textile art, crochet, performance and sculptures in ceramics, clay, porcelain and buttons. According to her, “my work seeks to evoke the strength and power of the feminine, the power of women as the driving force of the meaning of their own existence in the world.” Her works relate to the memory and experiences that the artist lived in her childhood in the countryside. As well as they approach the forms of the female body, the process of motherhood and the relationships that the ways of life establish with territoriality. When referring to her production, she states that “(…) in my work I want to weave and shape to de-structure, to undo what must be undone and to expose ways of life and expressions that many years of concealment wanted to cast into oblivion. ”.