Chiara Banfi

Brazilian artist Chiara Banfi conflates music and visual art, formulating visual interpretations of sounds and the instruments that produce them. Her sculptures, wall pieces, and installations are often constructed from the same materials we associate with music: stained wood to resemble ‘sunburst’ tinted guitars, vinyl from records, and rolls of cassette tape. In her 2015 solo exhibition at Silvia Cintra + Box 4, Banfi created a series of collages made with small pieces of agate overtop music composition paper. The agate, a type of quartz used as a stabilizer in sound equipment and record players, like every mineral, has its own frequencies, vibrations, and consequently, sound. In addition to these collages, the artist created an installation that involved attaching RCA cables to river stones, suggesting a memory the stones might have for the sounds of a running river. 

Banff has held solo exhibitions at Galeria Vermelho in São Paulo, Galeria Silvia Cintra + Box4 in Rio de Janeiro, Galeria Luanda in Porto Alegre, LABF15 in Lyon, and Gasworks in London, among others. Group exhibitions include Museu de Arte moderns (MAM SP) in Sâo Paulo, DHC/Art Foundation for Contemporary Art in Montreal, Museu de República in Rio de Janeiro, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, among others.