Vanessa da Silva

Vanessa da Silva (b. São Paulo, 1976) is an artist living and working in London, UK.

Her work explores nationality, identity, migration and displacement, reflecting her own experiences as a Latin American immigrant to the UK since the early 2000s. Working across sculpture, textiles, installation and performance, da Silva’s practice interrogates ideas of both cultural and transactional exchange, as well as notions of trade and value. Interweaving the personal with the political, she investigates the amalgamation of different histories and cultures in the development of her identity. Da Silva’s intuitive approach to composition results in organic forms that make reference to the inner architecture of the body. Although abstract, her work explores elements of figuration via the choreography of human behaviour, in particular the way we travel through the world. Many of da Silva’s sculptures are interactive, emphasising the inextricable link between body and movement.

She is a graduate of FAAP in São Paulo, Brazil (BA, Industrial Design 1999) and Royal College of Art (MA, Painting 2017).

Recent exhibitions include: Roda Viva at Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno, Wales, UK (solo, 2025), Wild Uplands, as part of Bradford City of Culture 2025, Bradford, UK (2025), Sculpture in the City, London, UK (2024-present), Hold Me Now, at IONE & MANN, London UK (2023-2024), Trickster Figures: Sculpture and the Body, at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, UK (2023), Muamba Grove (2022), at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK (2022-present), The Inner Rhythm of the Collective, at Lungley Gallery, London, UK (Solo 2021), Mamão com Açúcar, Duarte Sequeira Gallery at Artissima, Turin, Italy (solo, 2021), Vertical Zen, at Hospitalfield in Arbroath, Scotland (solo, 2019).

EXHIBITION: Hold me now ~ december 2023 - January 2024

SELECTED WORKS