Lucia Laguna Exhibition Walkthrough: WIth Larry Ossei-Mensah

Lucia Laguna's paintings unfold through an encounter with her surroundings—from garden views and foliage to urban fragments such as fencing, billboards, and power lines—entangled within abstract textures and networks of geometric motifs. These elements gather in carefully calibrated gestures that assemble landscapes and vistas across fractured pictorial planes. Forms appear and dissolve across the canvas, emerging through the accumulation and erasure of successive layers of paint. Like the suburban carioca views the artist observes from the windows of her studio, her compositions are driven by a wayward, palimpsestic logic.

Her solo exhibitions include A Propósito de duas janelas, Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); Life is Only Possible Reinvented, Sadie Coles, London, UK (2022); Lucia Laguna: Vizinhança, MASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil (2018). Laguna has taken part in the group shows Direito à forma, Galeria Fonte, Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil (2024); Dos brasis: arte e pensamento negro, SESC Belenzinho, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Crônicas Cariocas, MAR - Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2022) and the 30th Bienal de São Paulo - A iminência das poéticas, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2012). Her work can be found in important public collections, such as Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Coleção Banco Itaú, São Paulo, Brazil; MAM - Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; MAM - Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; MAR - Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; MASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil e Museu Nacional de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil.

Larry Ossei-Mensah is a Ghanaian-American curator, cultural critic, and writer whose practice amplifies diverse artistic voices and fosters global cultural exchange. Renowned for bridging communities across the contemporary art world, he has organized exhibitions in cities including Athens, London, Rome, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, and São Paulo, collaborating with artists such as Derrick Adams, Edson Chagas, Sanford Biggers, Sonia Gomes, Esther Mahlangu, Amoako Boafo, and Zeh Palito.

He has held key curatorial roles, including Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and Curator-at-Large at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His projects have appeared at institutions including the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), The MET in Manila, MASS MoCA, the Denver Art Museum, CAMH Houston, the Seattle Art Museum, Oolite Arts in Miami, ICA San Francisco, and Storm King Art Center featuring the work of Sonia Gomes, as well as at galleries including Almeida & Dale and Simões de Assis in São Paulo.

Ossei-Mensah is also the co-founder and president of ARTNOIR, a cultural platform dedicated to supporting artists of color through exhibitions, programming, and storytelling. Recent initiatives include the transatlantic exhibition Watering a Black Garden, presented in collaboration with the Open Space Contemporary Art Museum (OSCAM) in Amsterdam, which brought together artists from across the African diaspora to explore joy, lineage, and creative sovereignty.

Through his curatorial work, writing, and public programming, Ossei-Mensah continues to champion artist-centered practices and foster dynamic cultural exchange across the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and beyond.