Laura Lima put forth a body of work that she herself calls ‘images’. Lima’s ‘images’ are not performance, not installation, not cinema. The ‘images’ the artist uses are conceptualized works of an accumulation of visual clarity and factual firmness. Among the works that symbolize such rigorously conceptual projects, <Man=flesh/Woman=flesh (Homem=carne/Mulher=carne)> is the most well-known. Parts of Laura Lima’s works are related to the notion of ornamental philosophy. Lima directly opposes the conventional view of thinking that ‘ornaments are not important’. She twists and overturns definitions and notions that are considered to be general and conventional.
This is the first time for her work <Ascenseur>(2013, 2016) presented in Busan Biennale2016 to be shown in Asia. Standing in front of this work, we are confronted with an arm reaching out from underneath a wall, groping for a set of keys. The artist thought that while we easily think of this arm as being impertinent to us, thinking that it must belong to someone else, that arm actually could be ours. In this sense, the work touches upon the most basic forms of presence and interaction.
