BIO

Layla Moreira Bispo (b. 1994, Recife, Brazil) is an artist working in Houston, TX. They earned their undergraduate degree from the University of Houston in 2016 in English-Creative Writing and their MFA in IPEF (Interdisciplinary Practices in Emerging Forms) in 2023. Their sculpture practice primarily utilizes found objects and architectural samples. Their sculptures challenge the viewer’s perception of potential, capitalistic culture, and the idea of aspirational architecture.

Statement

My family immigrated to Houston in 1997 in pursuit of a better life. As a child, I remember rarely playing with toys and instead opting for the hobby of taking things apart and gluing them back together. Armed with dollar-store superglue and an eyeglass repair kit, I would take apart alarm clocks, jeans, trash, dolls and little dollar-store trinkets, before gluing them all together in a new way. The act of gluing disconnected items together assigned new meaning and relevance to physical objects in the same way that an immigrant child often must organize and assemble foreign information in order to make meaningful distinctions. This material translation has evolved to include miniature toys, miscellaneous jewels, textile samples, and other objects representative of both (a) a timeline of a transforming psyche and (b) the devalorization of materials once something has become broken, or singular, or used or discarded. This body of work questions capitalistic value and repositions a melee of found objects into representative monuments erected to reflect the fantasy of building The American Dream.