Unforeseen

Rio-based sculptor Ana Holck is one of the leading artists of her generation in Brazil, dedicating more than two decades to a practice marked by rigor and experimentation. Her work has its roots in her formative years studying architecture, artistic training at Parque Lage School of Visual Arts, and academic research. It incorporates elements that lend lightness to her pieces: movement as a defining aspect of the process, combined with a curiosity for exploring form in space.

Nearly ten years ago, Ana began working with ceramics. After a trajectory investigating concrete, iron, and rectilinear forms through a more rational approach, clay transformed her studio practice, creating new relationships between organic and inorganic materials, tensions between straight lines and curves, and the duality between fragility and hardness—a silent metaphor for life itself, full of unforeseen events that cannot be controlled. Ana Holck builds structures that challenge formal stability while remaining solid, activating the viewer’s bodily perception. Her work engages with contemporary sculptural discourse while maintaining strong poetic and experiential qualities, resulting in a body of work that has matured and embraced risk.

In this interview, conducted via Google Meet, Ana discusses her references, creative process, projects, and the theoretical and practical questions that have led to her most recent sculptures. Through investigations of spatial structures, material tensions, and experimentation within the language of sculpture, she establishes a sophisticated relationship between materiality, the expansion of form, and the vital necessity of artistic gesture—as becomes evident throughout this conversation.

Daniela Labra

Daniela Labra: Ana, thank you for this interview, which allows the public to come closer to your work and your thinking. Let’s begin with the title, Unforeseen Events. How did it come about?

Ana Holck: It emerged when I abruptly lost someone close to me. At that moment, the works began receiving more urgent titles. Unforeseen Events carries a sense of urgency. And that started happening more in both life and work: the more you expose yourself and submit yourself to the outside world, the more things escape your control. I had always been restrained and rational, and suddenly I found myself in a kind of short circuit. Ceramics, by nature, carries this urgency—it dries, it demands a rhythm. It is a living material that requires dedication. There are many stages, many risks, and moments when everything can go wrong. I count on unforeseen events; I have learned to live with them.

D.L.: When you were very young, you studied contemporary dance, which in some way influenced your sculptural work. Later, you studied architecture, a more rational and mathematical discipline. How do your sculptures today bring together aspects of the body and the investigation of space?

A.H.: When I graduated in architecture, I dedicated myself to spatial issues and installations. Sculpture only appeared later, when I wanted to create works on a scale that I could manipulate and store.

I worked extensively with the idea of the body experiencing space. In a way, this was connected to the act of making itself. In installations, there was a physical involvement in assembling the works, which reappeared in the installation of my recent pieces, where I thread metal through ceramic. During this process, I noticed a movement generated by the sculpture itself and decided to film the assembly of a work in time-lapse. I set up a camera on a tripod, and the video went viral. From then on, I began filming and observing this movement during installations, which had something performative about them. Studio life is all about experimentation. It is the great construction site, isn’t it?

D.L.: And what defines sculpture for you today, in terms of language, category, and concept?

A.H.: I’ve stopped thinking so much about that, as I’ve had to focus on making my work. I think artists end up entering a more singular universe, shaped by the things around them and by what is happening in the world. I believe there is a sensitivity intrinsic to the times we live in, which converges into art.

Today, I see a profound crisis. We live in an extremely virtual world. I perceive a return to making, to the concrete manipulation of reality. All of this is connected to a broader illness in society. In some ways, I myself became unwell and felt the need to make things with my hands. I turned to ceramics because I needed to regain control over my process. Learning ceramic techniques takes time, but the central challenge is making them work within your own language and way of thinking.

D.L.: There was a situation in which a simple change in a studio project led to a new work and gave meaning to research you were already pursuing…

A.H.: There are works that are highly designed and rational—that is one possible path, and it is where I come from. But when you are in the studio, things happen. Perhaps it is precisely through experimentation, trial and error, that the most transformative things emerge. There are moments when you surrender yourself to the process, to accidents—and you need to be ready to see them as possibilities.

I was already working with ceramics when I arrived at the Entroncados series. I was trying to make one work, then another, until an unforeseen event changed everything. It is remarkable when a work reveals something new to you. A simple change in the position of a piece opened up an entire universe for me.

D.L.: You work at different scales, from smaller pieces to installation projects. Are you concerned with the modular nature of sculpture? Can smaller pieces be understood both as individual entities and as parts of a larger body?

A.H.: Modules and repetition, with small variations that escape order and control, interest me greatly. The module is a kind of mechanism for me. With ceramics, it became even more central as a way of increasing scale, but there is no fixed rule. Some works already emerge as embryos of expansion; others do not. Sometimes the vision that a work could exist on another scale comes much later.

D.L.: If you could realize a new project in the near future, what would you envision?

A.H.: When I began working with ceramics, I had to rethink the scale of my work, sometimes enlarging it and sometimes reducing it. It took me a long time to achieve larger scales with ceramics.

Research projects that I began and interrupted often return later. The possibility of creating site-specific installations with strong physical impact and large scale interests me greatly, but I would never give up my studio practice. I find it very stimulating to work across different scales, and in truth, one does not exclude the other.