Between Orbits
Curated by Eder Chiodetto
september/ december 2026
at Casa Proeza, Rio de Janeiro
Between Orbits
From an early age, I learnt to look upwards.
My father went to the heaven when I was only eight years old. Since then, one part of me has
remained on its way towards him, while the other learnt to stay.
Between leaving and remaining, I built a universe.
The instant before landing.
The instant before take-off.
It is from this place that my images are born. They are apparitions, traces, oracles,
premonitions. Bodies dissolving, figures emerging from darkness, silences, forces of nature,
stars, explosions. Forms still coming into being, as though they were on the verge of
happening.
There is a Japanese Buddhist term for this space: Nakazora — the interval between heaven and
earth, the place where one’s feet cannot find the ground.
There is another one of Sanskrit origin, rooted in Hinduism: Akasha — the primordial void, the
vast opening that symbolises the Spirit, and that provides the space in which the other four
elements can exist and interact: earth, water, fire and air.
Within this space, the cosmos is no longer distant. It pulses within. The body becomes
landscape.
And so, my images linger between presence and absence, vision and illusion, matter and
spirit. Circles open into ellipses. Orbits shift.
I don’t grow roots.
I create passages.
And I follow them, between worlds, searching not exactly for a place to belong, but for that
suspended moment in which everything may yet be transformed.
From loss, I make light.
From emptiness, awareness.
From falling, flight.
In searching for my father, I had to imagine a place from which I could escape where I felt
trapped. Photography revealed to me that what I seek is a form of freedom that does not
depend on arriving anywhere.
I inhabit the interval.
I am a body that insists on remaining in between.
I have learnt the language of suspension.
Luciana Rique
"Celestial bodies trace orbits that choreograph the cosmos and absorb light, while time, in its infinite cadence, takes on the task of sculpting forms and drawing existences. Matter never rests. Even that which appears inert harbours movement and metamorphosis. It is within this unfathomable space between the visible and the invisible, permanence and volatility, that Luciana Rique conceives the works brought together in Between Orbits, her third solo exhibition.
In this new project, stellar movements, alchemy, the transformation of matter and the behaviour of light illuminate new territories and poetic possibilities within her practice. Reddish hues and cosmological elements emerge throughout her images, alluding to rubedo, the culminating stage of alchemy, in which spirit and matter become one.
The gravitational centre of Luciana’s work comes into focus through successive dissolutions and recompositions, arising from the encounter between concepts and the materials chosen for this passage through her studio. There, the artist brings her photographs, which evoke asteroids and cosmic dust, into contact with materials endowed with memory and density: iron plates, handmade Korean papers and gold leaf.
Iron symbolises strength and the capacity to break recurring cycles; handmade paper evokes and traces the subtlety of transformation; gold radiates, disclosing renewed and promising times. In their encounter with the photographic gesture, weight and lightness, opacity and brilliance, stillness and suspension merge. The hybrid interplay resulting from these combinations creates a constellation of works that proposes territories of contemplation and stability. Within these imaginary territories, the artist opens a passage towards the subtle space that holds the existence of things. In her practice, Luciana conceives of art as a therapeutic means of listening inwardly and restoring an inner order.
To create is a way of moving through the instability of the world, while forging a parallel path towards introspection and reconciliation with one’s own becoming. Between Orbits thus proposes a parallel world: not always visible, yet perceptibly tangible. A refuge that does not imply escape, but reconnection. As in alchemy, the decisive transformation takes place not only within matter, but also within the one who attentively witnesses the mystery of its change."
Eder Chiodetto
curator
