27 January – 29 March 2026

The Institute of Contemporary Arts is delighted to present The Drawing Drawing, the first London solo exhibition by Brazilian multidisciplinary artist Laura Lima (b. 1971, Minas Gerais). 

Marking a significant introduction of her work to UK audiences, the exhibition will unfold across the Upper and Lower Galleries in a series of installations involving sculpture, movement, live performers and public participation. At the heart of The Drawing Drawing will be a new interactive sculptural installation of the same name which reimagines the traditional framework of the life drawing class. 

Since the mid-90s, Lima has become recognised for her subversive artworks which explore the relationship between bodies and their environment, questioning social expectations and accepted hierarchies by staging live situations where people, objects and spaces interact in unconventional ways.

More info

Taking place in the Lower Galleries, Lima’s new commission The Drawing Drawing will upend the traditional format of the life drawing class, blurring the lines between audience and artwork. A cornerstone of Western artistic training since the Renaissance, life drawing centres the human figure, upholds drawing as a foundational discipline and promises mastery through faithful representation of perspective and anatomy. In Lima’s installation, ‘drawing’ is redefined as an expansive, conceptual proposition. Visitors will be invited to put pencil to paper in a life drawing class in which the core elements of the setting are recognisable, but any conventions of subject and object, of perspective and representation, mastery and value, are destabilised.

Throughout the building, discrete performative sculptural works from various stages of Lima’s surprising career will lay the conceptual groundwork for The Drawing Drawing installation. Also on view in the Lower Galleries will be Ascenseur, a work first conceived in 2013. Involving a live performer partially visible to the public but separated by architecture, the work offers a surrealistic jolt from the ordinary. In Upper Galleries, a scene related to Balé Literal will transform notions of 'drawing' with a playful object dancing through space –⁠ at once familiar and strange.

As a whole, the exhibition will be characterised by movement, poetic discovery and unpredictability. The Drawing Drawing and related performative installations, sculptural gestures and ephemeral actions will demand a shift in perception from the viewer; Lima explores the human experience in specific situations as choreographies of bodies, space, and the exchange between thought and matter.

Further information about the exhibition and event programme will be announced in the coming weeks.

About the artist

For over three decades Laura Lima has created work that initiates the circumstances for an encounter. Neither performance nor strictly sculpture, Lima’s work prioritises ambiguity, displacement, and productive estrangement. Since 1994 when she led a cow from her pasture onto Ipanema Beach, she has been developing a rigorous conceptual practice that materialises across diverse matter and form. Often incorporating live elements and instruction-based methods, her works tend to unfold independently of the artist’s control. At its core, Lima’s practice seeks to give visual form to philosophical concerns, asking us to reconsider what we assume to be stable or self-evident.

Audience and performer bodies are integral to Lima’s sculptural situations, functioning variously as medium, concept, material, or political presence. A key principle in her practice is the equal consideration of all forms — living and non-living — as sculptural matter, rejecting hierarchies of agency or value. In work that places us in a position to examine human relationships and unmask social norms, Lima always poses open questions and embraces uncertainty as an integral part of her practice.

Born in 1971, Laura Lima grew up in Brazil’s countryside region of Governador Valadares. While still very young, Lima moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she is currently based. The artist received a BA in Philosophy from the State University of Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s and also studied art the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro. In 1999, she founded the Organism RhR (Representative hyphen Representative) and served as its first bureaucratic administrator. As such, Lima created a glossary and an archive of the activities of the group, including ideas such as a philosophy of nothing, the non-functional, emptiness, and failure.

Lima’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in institutions around the world such as MACBA Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Spain (2023); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2018); Pinacoteca (Octágono), São Paulo (2018); ICA Miami (2016); SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2015); Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina (2015); Centro Cultural Banco do Nordeste, Fortaleza, Brazil (2015); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, The Netherlands (2014); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2013); Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (2013); MUAC, Mexico City (2013); Foundation Eva Klabin, Rio de Janeiro (2012); among others. Lima presented a major outdoor installation in the 2025 Boston Public Art Triennial. Her works are held in numerous important collections, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Instituto Inhotim, Brazil; Modern Art Museum of São Paulo; Bonniers Konsthall, Sweden; Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Switzerland; Zabludowicz Collection; and the Bonnefantenmuseum, The Netherlands, among others.

Supporters

Laura Lima: The Drawing Drawing is supported by the British Council and Instituto Guimarães Rosa, Brazil as part of the UK/Brazil Season of Culture 2025-26, a year-long cultural programme between the two countries; Art Fund; and Henry Moore Foundation.

Tue to Sun: 12 – 8pm
Pay what you can: 12 – 1pm 
Tickets are available for 1 hour slots

The artworks in the exhibition include live performers. The installation in the Lower Gallery, The Drawing Drawing, will have a nude model at various times throughout the day.

Before you visit the exhibition, please note:

Exhibition Preview
Mon 26 Jan, 7:30pm

Artist Talk: Laura Lima
Wed 28 Jan, 6:45pm

Artist's Film Picks: Bacurau (2019)
Sun 8 Feb, 2pm

Life Drawing in Motion with artist Tegen Williams
Thu 19 Feb, 6pm

Artist's Film Picks: Brazilian Shorts Programme
Sun 22 Feb, 2pm

Members' Curator Tour
Thu 26 Feb, 6pm

Artist's Film Picks: Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964)
Sun 1 Mar, 2pm

Life Drawing in Motion with artist Tegen Williams
Thu 12 Mar, 6pm

Additional programme to be announced, including a discursive event in partnership with Rio-based independent art space Solar dos Abacaxis.

Access information

• Limited step-free access to the Upper Gallery. To use the lift, please speak to a member of staff at the Box Office.
• There is a wheelchair-accessible ramp into the Lower Gallery
• We provide Sensory Maps and Large Print Guides, these can be found at the information & sales desk
• Free for visitors where ticket prices are a barrier, please email access@ica.art

If you have other access requirements, need more info, or want to contact us, go to the Access Page.