Discipline
Performance and language
About the artist
Lucila Novoa (b.1979 Bogotá, Colombia) is a Colombian-Dutch artist based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She holds a Master of Art Praxis Degree from the Dutch Art Institute (Arnhem, NL). As an adoptee of color, displaced from Colombia to the Netherlands – without her consent – her artistic practice rethinks what it means to be human. Guided by black feminist thinkers such as Sylvia Wynter, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Saidiya Hartman, she argues that at the core of contemporary humanness lies a struggle defined by a racialized order of human existence. As a form of critical fabulation she’s introducing the figure of the human adoptee of color - whose life is lived in the absence of cultural memory and a historical archive - to explore the power of speculative absence by seeking hope and healing in the creation of new narratives and embodied experiences.
Exhibitions, performances, readings, workshops have been hosted by and collaborated with Geo Wyex, Lucciana Bolivar, Ellen Rooijakkers, Zoe Scoglio, edition~verso (Johannesburg, SA), Daily Practice (Rotterdam, NL), H47 (Leeuwarden, NL), A Tale of A Tub (Rotterdam, NL), V2_Lab for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam, NL), Hordaland Kunstsenter (Bergen, Norway), Shimmer (Rotterdam, NL), Billytown (The Hague, NL). Residencies at edition~verso (Johannesburg, SA), Artist Proof Studio (Johannesburg, SA) and AGALAB (Amsterdam, NL). Works and or publications can be found at Billytown Bookshop, Books at, Framer Framed, KIOSK Rotterdam, Page Not Found, San Serriffe.
Photo: Lucciana Bolivar, Rotterdam (NL) 2022
“The sorting center”
Written by Lucila Novoa
Edited by Pelumi Adejumo
Rotterdam, 2024