Weaving survival and memory into monumental form, Lidia Lisbôa transforms gestures of care into radical acts of creation.
Installation view of Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo by Lidia Lisbôa, during the 36th Bienal de São Paulo. © Suzette Bell-Roberts
For her presentation at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Lidia Lisbôa turns to the intimate gestures of care—crocheting, braiding, sewing, and weaving—to explore how creativity is deeply entangled with survival, memory, and transformation. Working with fragments of fabric imbued with history, she creates monumental forms that echo the body and its acts of nourishment, elevating the everyday labour of care into a radical artistic language. In this conversation, she reflects on how her practice embodies the Bienal’s theme, where living and creating merge into a single, continuous gesture. Suzette Bell-Roberts speaks to Lisbôa about the work.
Your work often explores birth, transformation, and memory through tactile and corporeal forms. How does this deep connection with the body reflect the everyday creativity required to live, care, and survive, as proposed by the Bienal’s theme?
Lidia Lisbôa: The first work I did was at the age of six, when I created “my uncle Paizinho’s camp bed.” I took the open bed, covered it with pigeon pea leaves, one on each side, and placed a small yellow flower in the centre. With that simple gesture, I spent the entire day dedicated, as if my body already knew that art would be its extension. Years later, my uncle told me, “Now I understand that girl was an artist and didn’t even know it.” From an early age, I learned to crochet before I could even read, and my life has been intertwined with the act of creating ever since. I am an artist all the time: I dream, I walk, I eat, and I care for myself while creating. This continuity also appears in early motherhood, as I cared for my siblings, in the act of nourishing and transforming. My practice is this: living, caring, and resisting through creation.
Installation view of Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo by Lidia Lisbôa, during the 36th Bienal de São Paulo. © Suzette Bell-Roberts
In the series “Tetas que deu de mamar ao mundo” (Teats that gave to breastfeed the world), you create monumental forms that celebrate motherhood and the act of nurturing. You see these gestures of care and bodily giving as creative—and perhaps even radical—acts in today’s world.
For me, nourishment is an essential gesture, a movement that arises from the body and spans generations. It is from this root that the series “ Tetas que dar de mamar ao mundo” (Teats that gave to breastfeed the world) emerges, presented at the 36th São Paulo Biennial. These monumental sculptures, made with strips of torn fabric, braided, and held together with crochet, directly evoke breasts—the forms from which life is nourished, where the act of breastfeeding becomes a universal symbol of care. My work begins with the intimate gesture—that which fits between the fingers—but expands in scale until it becomes a monument. By transforming personal experiences into collective space, the works affirm that nourishment and support are creative practices and, today, profoundly political and radical acts.
Installation view of Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo by Lidia Lisbôa, during the 36th Bienal de São Paulo. © Suzette Bell-Roberts
Sewing, mending, and weaving are at the heart of your practice. What does it mean to you to use these traditionally domestic and intimate techniques as tools of artistic, political, and emotional expression?
I come from a rural area, and my life has always been surrounded by manual labour: I worked as a domestic worker, worked in haute couture ateliers, and participated in theatre… Art has always presented itself to me in an intense and intertwined way. Sewing, mending, and weaving are, for me, more than techniques: they are ways of constructing narratives from life. I learned to crochet even before I learned to read, watching my mother, aunts, grandmothers, and neighbours gather in sewing circles. These gestures retain touch, memory, and experience, and, when transformed into artwork, they also become political and emotional expressions. In them, I demonstrate the strength of invisible practices of care, as well as the power of networks of sociability and female resistance.
Installation view of Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo by Lidia Lisbôa, during the 36th Bienal de São Paulo. © Suzette Bell-Roberts
Your materials are rich in memory—scraps, patches, flesh-toned fabrics. How do you see this process of piecing together disparate fragments as a metaphor for creative survival and transformation, both personal and collective?
For me, piecing together fragments is like looking at the world full of colours, learning directly from nature. Each piece of fabric carries a memory, a story. When I unite everything, something new is born, which helps me move forward and also allows me to share with others. It’s transforming what seemed like a remainder into a path, pain into beauty, emptiness into presence. It’s creative survival.
Installation view of Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo by Lidia Lisbôa, during the 36th Bienal de São Paulo. © Suzette Bell-Roberts
This Bienal proposes creativity as a force not only for making art, but for living and relating. How do you experience your practice as a form of relational creativity—one that connects bodies, memories, and spaces in a living, constantly evolving fabric?
For me, creativity is comfort. Tetas brings warmth, care, and a way of being together. I work with memory, with the gesture of sewing and braiding, and in doing so, I unite stories and people. My practice is this living fabric: never finished, always in a state of transformation. It’s a way of creating bonds, of nourishing, and of resisting together with others.
Lidia Lisbôa’s presentation ‘Tetas que deu de mamar ao mundo’ is on view at the 36th São Paulo Bienal until 11 January 2026. For more information, visit 36.bienal.org.br.
