Laura Lima at Bonniers Konsthall: Aesthetic Systems as ‘Ways of Worldmaking’

The work of Brazilian artist Laura Lima offers the viewer parallel realities within which it is possible to live. Such realities often preclude the distinction between the ‘real world’ and the ‘art world’, as is apparent in Bar/Restaurant, The Naked Magician and Choice – exhibited from 10 September to 30 November 2014 at Bonniers Konsthall, in Stockholm. This exhibition – curated by Sara Arrhenius with the contribution of Caroline Elgh – shows that, instead of asking ourselves ‘what’ is art, we should ask ‘when’ is art. As Lima’s work suggests, the answer to the right question is: when objects operate aesthetically by establishing a referential connection with the body as cognitive apparatus and when such apparatus becomes part and parcel of that aesthetic system, it allowed to exist. Her work also proves that ‘how an object or event [, or person] functions as a work [of art] explains how, through certain modes of reference, what so functions may contribute to a vision of – and to the making of – a world’. Similar to Nelson Goodman in his writings, Lima presents us with a method of conceiving art where the meaning of the aesthetic experience depends on our relation to the artwork and the codes and knowledge it actualises, where visual elements and the images thereof may be distinguished from their referents and end up devising their very own meanings. It is thus possible to state that from Lima’s work, as from Goodman’s, springs a constructivist and relativist philosophy. Accordingly, it is fruitful to draw on Goodman’s ideas to interpret what has been seen at this exhibition, albeit Lima’s method was not immediately recognisable.