LUNA PAIVA
b. 1980, France_Luna Paiva gilds objects that were not born to be art, but had a nude life of their own. Mounted rocks, succulent plants and cacti, they are species of a wild realm that seems habitual: inhabitants of Creation, like us. Her objects speak of a life that preexisted the human eye. Her gilded still lifes play with the sacred layers of fetish present in contemporary art but also spanning from an ancient tradition, where casting gold embodied a sacred anima. Ready-mades of nature gilded for profane adoration.
_Born in Paris in 1980, Luna Paiva holds a Licence in Art History and Archaeology from La Sorbonne and studied film at NYU. Working across sculpture, installation, and photography, she has exhibited widely throughout Latin America, Europe, and the United States.In 2025, she presented The Seed, a solo exhibition exploring the origin of creation through large format ceramic sculptures at Studio Twenty Seven in New York City. Paiva has permanent public sculptures in Spain, Argentina, Morocco and La Habana. In 2024, she inaugurated a sculpture-playground for the Amizmiz orphanage in Morocco.
She took part in the 2024 Havana Biennial with both a collective artwork and a permanent public sculpture.Her collaborations with fashion houses include two Hermès installations (Artist’s Windows, Buenos Aires 2014 and Barcelona 2016), a design collaboration highlighting Latin American women artists with Ferragamo and Paul Andrew in 2019, a series of embossment prints for Cartier in 2020, and a new design project with Nina Ricci in 2024.As a set designer, she created the scenography for the opera Hercules en el Mato Grosso at CETC/Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires, 2014) and for Hercules in Mato Grosso at Dixon Place (New York, 2015), selected and co-produced by Americas Society.Her photographic work has appeared in editorial media such as Vogue Italia, L’Officiel Art, Barzón, The Skirt Chronicles, and Apartamento.Paiva’s awards include the execution prize in Maurizio Cattelan’s collaborative installation Eternity (Art Basel Cities, 2018, curated by Cecilia Alemani), the Itaú Art Prize (2013), and the Buenos Aires Photo Petrobras Art Prize (2011). Her work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art Buenos Aires.
Courtesy Alzueta Gallery
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