Material Experiments

Inspired by Cecilia Vicuña’s 2022 Hyundai Commission, this event will see three artists share their material practice. Speakers include Soraia Samju who worked closely with Cecilia Vicuña on the material research and installation of the Brain Forest Quipu, and Eduardo Padilha who works with found materials to reflects on our relationship to domestic space. They will then join a panel discussion on practical making of materials with an environmental lens, chaired by Gabriela Salgado.

Soraia Samju is from Lisbon, Portugal and based in London. With a background in Fashion Design, Samju now works in research & development, as a pattern cutter and artisan across the fields of art, interior and fashion. Samju’s personal art practice is currently devoted to pictorial representation in textiles and sound through weaving.

Eduardo Padilha is an artist with an MA Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Art & Design (1997), BA Fine Arts from Gerrit Rietveld Academie (1995) and Carnegie Mellon University (1993). Padilha founded the artist run space BalinHouseProjects in 2006 and publishes books on events there with support granted from Arts Council England.

Gabriela Salgado is an Argentine-born curator based in London and working internationally. She has curated numerous international exhibitions including the 2nd Biennale of Thessaloniki, Greece (2009) and La Otra Bienal in Bogotá, Colombia (2013). She has lectured in over twenty countries, contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues and artists publications and was awarded curatorial residences in Finland, Colombia, and Vietnam. Salgado has been Director of The Showroom in London since 2022.