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Berlin • b. 1972
Engaging with the history of 20th century architecture, design, and art, Leonor Antunes reflects on the function of everyday objects and the potential of modernist forms to become sculptures. She investigates the coded values and flow of ideas embedded within objects and transforms them into reimagined abstract structures. Integrating materials such as rope, wood, leather, and brass, Antunes quietly rattles the aesthetic traces of modernism to foresee a revived way of thinking: looking forward by looking back. Borrowing from vernacular traditions of craftsmanship from South America, Mexico, and Portugal, the artists seeks to understand the construction principles behind rational designs and the process of reducing reality to a geometric abstraction. The grid, present in most of the art works, objects, and buildings she references, is transformed into brass nets, interlaced and knotted strings, leather straps, and looms of hand-woven cotton threads. She finds inspiration in the practice of female artists: their radical social and political stances and their practical improvement of everyday life through art and design.
