Biography
Lila de Magalhaes (b. 1986, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) lives and works in Los Angeles. De Magalhaes holds a BA with First Class Honours in Fine Art Painting and Printmaking from The Glasgow School of Art (2008) and an MFA from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (2013).
Her recent solo exhibitions include Laps of Chrysalis at Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2024); Modo Host with Thora Dolven Blake at Galeria Cavalo, Rio de Janeiro (2024); Comfortable hole, bye with Urara Tsuchiya at Parcel, Tokyo (2023); and Involuntary Earthling at Deli Gallery, New York (2023). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Cob Gallery, London; X Museum, Beijing; Jessica Silverman, San Francisco; and Ruschman Gallery, Chicago, among others. Her work has been featured in Artforum Critic's Picks on two occasions, by Chloe Wyma (2023) and Andrew Beradini (2017).
Working primarily with textiles and ceramics, Lila de Magalhaes' practice builds an intimate visual language shaped by fable, humor, and the unruly logic of the body. Her works often blur distinctions between human, animal, and fantastical beings, creating sensuous worlds where everything and everyone come together in an unruly symbiosis. Through this earthly and otherworldly imagery, she explores embodiment as something unstable and continually open to metamorphosis.