Chinatown, New York
Paula Turmina
Space is Punk
Instituto de VisiónSpace Is Punk is the first solo exhibition by London-based Brazilian artist Paula Turmina. The works presented in this exhibition have been created specifically for the occasion and unfold through a distinct visual language informed by 20th-century avant-garde movements such as Futurism and latinamerican Modernism. They revolve around a theme that is both urgent and poetic: the conquest of space. Space Is Punk takes as its point of departure a 1961 statement published in Jornal do Brasil: “the cosmos must belong to everyone.” Echoing Brazil’s early position in debates on the governance of outer space, the exhibition reflects on the shifting status of the cosmos—from a shared site of imagination and guidance to a contested domain shaped by geopolitical power, extraction, and surveillance. Bringing together painting and research, the project examines how outer space has historically informed cosmologies and collective imaginaries, while increasingly becoming entangled in systems of control and privatization. In contrast to these forces, the works propose a return to more intuitive, embodied, and spiritual ways of relating to the cosmos—understood not as a distant frontier, but as something that moves through bodies, stories, and everyday life. This perspective is informed by the artist’s experience of growing up in the Brazilian countryside, where the night sky functioned as a space of reflection and desire. Today, that same sky is mediated by satellites and technologies that transform wonder into uncertainty. This shift is reflected in a series of paintings in which elongated, fluid bodies appear shaped by shifting gravitational forces, guided less by rational structure than by intuitive, cosmic pull. Materially, the works incorporate pigments derived from black tourmaline sourced in Brazil, foregrounding the connection between speculative imagery and geological matter. Associated with protection and grounding, the mineral underscores how even fictional worlds are rooted in physical and cultural realities shaped by extraction. The title, Space Is Punk, frames space as both intimate and expansive—personal, social, and cosmic—while “punk” signals resistance, disorder, and the refusal of control. Together, they challenge the logic of domination that underpins contemporary space exploration, embracing instead its multiplicity and unpredictability. The project is informed by ongoing conversations with Lucian Walkowicz and Cris Van Eijk, whose interdisciplinary perspectives bring critical insight into the political, social, and imaginative dimensions of outer space. —BL Paula Turmina is a Brazilian artist based in London whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, printmaking, film, and writing. Her work explores the entanglement between bodies, landscapes, and planetary systems, often blurring the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman. Drawing from science fiction, ecological thought, and the histories of colonial extraction in Brazil, Turmina constructs speculative environments where figures appear in states of transformation, merging with mineral, vegetal, and atmospheric elements. Her visual language is marked by organic forms, layered surfaces, and a sensitivity to materiality, often incorporating pigments tied to specific regions. Influenced by both modernist traditions and contemporary ecological discourse, her work reflects on themes of interdependence, environmental instability, and the politics of land and resource use. Rather than presenting fixed narratives, Turmina's paintings propose open, evolving worlds, spaces where identity, matter, and time remain in constant transformation.