Vanessa da Silva São Paulo, Brazil, b. 1976

Vanessa da Silva (b. 1976, São Paulo, Brasil) is an artist based in London. She studied Painting at the Royal College of Art, in London and has a background in Industrial Design from FAAP, in São Paulo. Da Silva was the recipient of the Hopper Prize USA in 2020, the Gilbert Bayes Award from the Royal Society of Sculptors, in 2019 and was awarded a scholarship from the Royal College of Art in 2016 and 2017. She also received the Almacantar Studio Award, selected by Richard Wentworth and the Ox-Bow Residency Award in 2017. She was the invited artist in residence at the FAAP Residency Program, São Paulo in 2020; Galeria Duarte Sequeira´s Artist Residency Program, Braga, the Hospitalfield Open Commission Residency, Scotland and Pivô Research, SãoPaulo, in 2019.

Vanessa da Silva´s interdisciplinary process-based practice combines sculpture, installation and performance and focuses on issues of identity formation, migration and displacement. Da Silva is interested in the ambiguity of the image, ideas of exchange and concepts of trade and value. Through the weaving of the personal and the political, the artist investigates the overlaying and fusion of histories and cultures that builds oneself.

Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, York; Frieze Sculpture, Regent´s Park, London; Public Gallery, London; Lungley Gallery, London and Hospitalfield, Arbroath.