Since the 1980s, Leda Catunda has constructed a visual lexicon shifting between mass culture and craftwork, employing abstract painting and sculpture as much as pop art’s collage and appropriation procedures. Making use of the imagistic voracity of our time, the artist creates haptic works – stuffed, frilled and sewn on domestic materials – making the support itself into content. The artist’s insistence on manual making nonetheless allows for an intimate dimension, alluding to a simultaneously familiar and personal atmosphere. With the means at hand and conserving the traces of her process, Catunda’s “soft world” insinuates a critique of the affirmation of identity through consumerism, reworking textile waste and the mechanisms of commercial culture.
Among the artist’s recent solo exhibitions are Paisagem Selvagem, Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (2024); Leda Catunda: EUFORIA, ICA Milano, Milan, Italy (2023); Geography, Bortolami Gallery, New York, USA (2022); Judy Chicago & Leda Catunda, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brasil (2022); Leda Catunda & Alejandra Seeber, MALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires (2021); Projeto Parede | Paisagem moderna, MAM – Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil (2019); I Love You Baby, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brasil (2016) and Leda Catunda e o gosto dos outros, Galpão Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo, Brasil (2015). She has also participated in the group shows Tecendo a manhã: Vida moderna e experiência noturna na arte do Brasil, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); Rituales del Cotidiano, Collegium, Arévalo, Spain (2024); Fullgás – Artes visuais e anos 1980 no Brasil, CCBB – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (2024); PLAY, FITE – Biennale Textile, Clermont-Ferrand, France (2024); El Dorado, Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Americas Society, New York, USA (2023); Re-materialized: the stuff that matters, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan, Italy (2023); and Utopias e Distopias, MAM-BA – Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador, Brasil (2022).
The artist has works included in important public collections, such as Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil; MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil; MOCA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA; Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Portugal; Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brasil; Fundación ARCO, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, Japan; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, USA; Blanton Museum of Art – The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA; Centro Wilfredo Lam, Havana, Cuba; MAC-USP – Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil; MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador, Brasil; MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil; MON – Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brasil and MAC – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Niterói, Brasil.
