Leda Catunda: Softness, Surface, and Excess Politics

Leda Catunda: Softness, Surface, and the Politics of Excess

Leda Catunda’s artistic practice navigates the interplay between tactility, ornamentation, and materials, challenging contemporary art's traditional limits. Her works embrace softness and rich surfaces, inviting viewers to reconsider the politics embedded in excess.

Art and Materiality

Catunda's installations refuse the austerity often associated with minimalism. Instead, her use of plush forms and vibrant fabrics foregrounds materiality and sensory engagement. This emphasis on softness disrupts dominant narratives in art that prioritize restraint and purity.

“My work is about the pleasure of surface and the invitation to touch, to experience the work beyond the visual,” Catunda explained in a recent interview.

Her approach foregrounds a political resistance to traditional hierarchies in art by valuing the decorative and the excessive—elements frequently dismissed as superficial or feminine.

The Politics of Excess

By embracing ornament and softness, Catunda challenges cultural norms that equate excess with wastefulness or lack of seriousness. Her art proposes that excess can be a form of empowerment and critique.

Catunda’s work plays with the idea that surfaces are not just coverings but active sites of meaning. Through tactility, she urges a reconsideration of how we assign value to materials and aesthetics.

Exhibition Highlights

Her exhibitions immerse viewers in environments where colors, textures, and shapes converge. Installations include plush sculptures and tactile panels that invite physical and emotional interaction, enhancing the experiential nature of her art.

Leda Catunda redefines contemporary art by infusing softness and ornamental excess as political tools that contest art world conventions and invite deep sensory engagement.

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ART AFRICA Magazine ART AFRICA Magazine — 2025-11-29

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