Serpentine traces

Explore Noara Quintana’s residency project around the tropical botanical motifs present in British visual culture.

Join us for an evening of presentations and discussion with our current artist-in-residence Noara Quintana. In conversation with independent curator and researcher Lucas Albuquerque, Noara will share a new work that has resulted out of her research project in London and discuss the histories it references and challenges.

Continuing her long-term investigations into materiality and everyday objects, Noara has used her residency in London to search for stories connecting Britain and the Amazon at the end of the 19th century: linking together the rubber trade, London’s Crystal Palace, and British Art Nouveau via the Amazonian plants Vitoria Régia (the Giant Water Lily), and Hevea brasiliensis (the Brazilian Rubber Tree). The project considers the influence of tropical botanical motifs in British architecture, the Arts and Crafts movement, and industrial design, and proposes a counter-colonial historiography of their presence.

Noara Quintana (Brazil) is an artist whose practice focuses on the materiality of everyday objects and their intersection with the histories of the Global South. Through installation and sculpture, her work gestures towards traces of exchange, architectural forms and narratives that contest the colonial imaginary.

Noara’s residency is supported by Instituto Inclusartiz. 

With artist-in-residence Noara Quintana

Biographies

Current Delfina Foundation resident, Noara Quintana (Brazil/USA) is an artist whose practice focuses on the materiality of everyday objects and their intersection with the histories of the Global South. Through installation and sculpture, her work gestures towards traces of exchange, architectural forms and narratives that contest the colonial imaginary.

Lucas Albuquerque is an independent curator and researcher, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Having previously worked as a curator and organiser at Galeria Aymoré, he currently coordinates the Artistic Residency Program of Instituto Inclusartiz, guiding artists, curators, and researchers between Rio de Janeiro, London, Amsterdam, Spain, and France. Lucas has curated several exhibition at both Instituto Inclusartiz and Galeria Aymoré, as well as other independent shows. He holds a BA in Art History from the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), and MA in artistic processes from the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ).