Chiara Banfi (São Paulo, 1979)

Chiara Banfi holds a degree in Visual Arts from Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (FAAP), São Paulo, class of 2003, and began exhibiting her work as early as 2002. She participated in the Rumos Artes Visuais Program at Instituto Itaú Cultural, 2005/2006 edition, and completed artist residencies at Gasworks Gallery in London, as the first-place winner of the Prêmio Chamex de Arte Jovem in 2005, and at the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles in 2008.

Her practice investigates the relationships between sound, frequency and form. In her early work, she dedicated herself to translating music into drawing, painting and installation, developing a distinctive visual vocabulary through the use of adhesive vinyl — an element that spread organically across geometric architectures, expanding through spaces like a living presence. Over time, her research deepened into the materiality of music, exploring instruments, their colors, shapes and methods of notation.

This path led the artist toward an interest in pause, silence and the imperceptible vibrations that constitute sound, incorporating elements such as rocks and crystals into her production. Progressively, Banfi has expanded her investigation toward the notion of frequency in dialogue with theories of physics and meditative practices, while maintaining a dreamlike atmosphere as the throughline of her work.

Her work has been presented at major institutions in Brazil and abroad, including Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; MAC Lyon, Lyon; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro; Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi; and the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

Her works are held in significant international collections, including De Vleeshal, Middelburg; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro; the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo Collection; Harvard University, Cambridge; Jorge M. Perez Collection / El Espacio 23, Miami; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and the Seattle Art Museum.