Laura Villarosa (Palermo, Italy, 1961) has lived and worked in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, since the 1980s. Her practice positions landscape as an expanded field, in which painting and textile techniques operate on equal terms. Threads, lines, cotton, nylon, cold porcelain, watercolor, acrylic paint and resin are recurring materials in a body of work that eschews literal representations of nature, proposing instead a material construction of the sensory experience of the land.
Villarosa's training combines a long-standing engagement with painting and color with the study of textile practices, which she has incorporated into her artistic practice since 2017, following her participation in the Imersões Poéticas program at Escola Sem Sítio, held at Paço Imperial in Rio de Janeiro under the guidance of artist Efrain Almeida. Since then, she has treated process itself as a material component of the work, building up layers of threads, fabrics and pigments across surfaces that acquire depth and volume. The compositions lean toward abstraction and evoke atmospheres that oscillate between serenity and unease.
In recent series, such as Paisagem e Sensibilidade, Villarosa has expanded her material repertoire, working on silks from San Leucio, a historic colony founded in southern Italy in the eighteenth century, renowned for producing fabrics for palaces and for its experiment in egalitarian society. She has also begun to use cold porcelain to model clouds and create different textures, composing imaginary landscapes that are at once utopian and dystopian. Villarosa sews the cold porcelain while it is still moist, before time and heat harden it. She does not regard herself as a ceramicist; rather, she treats the material as an extension of paint. Her works reveal an interest in the immateriality of air, the volume of clouds, the density of mountains and the unstable reflections of water.
Villarosa has held the solo exhibitions Lugar de passagem at Zipper Galeria (2024); A ambígua linha sinuosa at Zipper Galeria (2021); Na Voluta do horizonte at Casa Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 2025); A (des)ordem natural das coisas at Gaby Indio da Costa Arte Contemporânea (Rio de Janeiro, 2025); Aurora at Galeria Dotart (Belo Horizonte, 2023); Impermanências at CEART UFF (Niterói, 2023); Impermanência, a solo project at Zona Maco (Mexico City, 2023); Seiva at C. Galeria (Rio de Janeiro, 2022, curated by Catarina Duncan); Reinventando paisagens at DotArt (Belo Horizonte, 2020); and Melancolia da paisagem at Galeria Sem Título (Fortaleza, 2019). She has participated in group exhibitions including Paralelas at Casa Ondina (São Paulo, 2025); Fios, entre poéticas e tramas at Gaby Indio da Costa Arte Contemporânea (Rio de Janeiro, 2024); No tempo da pintura at Galeria Belizário (São Paulo, 2024); Rios e seus afluentes, presented by C.Galeria at ArtRio (Rio de Janeiro, 2023); Paisagem passagem at Fundação Mokiti Okada (São Paulo, 2021); the 12º Salão dos Artistas sem Galeria at Zipper Galeria (São Paulo, 2021); and Coradjetiva at BADESC (Florianópolis, 2014).