Leonor Antunes

About

The works often refer to the geometric forms and patterns of modernism’s lesser-known designers and architects, many of whom are women. In her research-based installations, everything from furniture by designer Eileen Moray Gray (1878-1976) to buildings by the architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) has been interpreted. The atmospheric installations are inspired by the specific context in which they are constructed, but typically Antunes’s art is also interested in techniques and materials that have traveled over long distances and become part of a global trade. The installations are tactile encounters between a site’s architectural memory and its craft history. Cork, rope, leather, and nets are recurring materials in Antunes’s spatial interventions.

Tensta is an unusually diverse and complex place where about ninety percent of the residents have a translocal background. Many come from the Middle East and North Africa and have fled from poverty or political and religious conflicts. Antunes’s project in Tensta will explore the site’s collective memory of migration. The project is developed together with the Women’s Centre in Tensta-Hjulsta, a nonprofit organization with members from over twenty countries, and KM Almgren, one of Scandinavia’s oldest silk weaving mills. 

Leonor Antunes’s works have previously been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the New Museum Project Room, New York (2015); Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2013); Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2013); Air de Paris, Paris (2012); Museo El Eco, Mexico City (2011); and Museu da Republica, Rio de Janeiro (2008).