LIFE & WORK

                                                                                        
 
Neyde Lantyer is a Brazilian visual artist living and working in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She studied Art at the Escola de Belas Artes da Universidade Federal da Bahia after attending Journalism (UFBA) and Social Work (UCS) both in Salvador-Brazil in the 1980’s. She earned a MA in Fine Arts at the Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto, Portugal (2021).

Lantyer’s work explores a variety of themes related to memory, belonging, migration and feminism. As an activist, she stands for democracy in her country while joining the international debate on migration, exclusion and post-colonialism besides the women’s struggle against gender oppression.

             




1. EARLY YEARS

Born in the mythical sertão, a region that was the scenario of important historic events and class struggles in the Brazilian history, she moved to Salvador, the old Brazilian colonial capital, as a teenager to attend university. Then, she joined the student’s struggle against the military dictatorship (1964-1985) that ruled the country for 21 years and collaborated on the foundation of the Brazilian Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores - PT) in the state of Bahia (1979-1985) as an affiliated student.
    
 
2. GENDER STUDIES 

           
While in the university, Lantyer developed a research addressing class and gender with women from poor local communities and wrote her graduation essay based on Simone de Beauvoir “The Second Sex” (1980-1984). As a follow up, she worked with groups of female workers on gender oppression and sexuality.

Later on, working with human resources, she created seminars on existential issues such as the simbolism of the heart, the meaning of death and the consequences of retirement (1988-1997).
3. ART ACADEMY
 
 
   

She began experimenting with photography and enrolled in the Fine Arts academy at Universidade Federal da Bahia (Escola de Belas Artes da UFBA) in 1990 and had her first solo exhibition in 1994 at Museum Casa do Benin, in Salvador da Bahia. Two years later, she created the course “Linguagem Fotográfica” (1996-1997), locally pioneering the debate on contemporary photography.
4. MIGRATION 

      

Shortly after she moved to Amsterdam (1998) where she enrolled in studies on photography, video en cinema in an array of institutions. In 2002 she had her first solo exhibition in Europe at WM Gallery. She followed the post-graduation program “Histories and Theories of Photography” at Universiteit van Leiden in 2008-9.
 

5. MUSIC AND CINEMA

    
 

 As a cultural practitioneer in the Netherlands, Lantyer became the chairwoman and subsequently the artistic director of bi-national A Hora do Brasil Foundation. All long seven years in charge, she created a line-up of artistic-cultural projects, been the Brazilian Summer Sessions (2007-2013) at Bimhuis, Amsterdam, the most known. Developed with Brazilian dancer and choreographer Claudia Trajano, the project was a combination of concerts, jam-sessions, music documentaries and talks. The highly successful program helped to build up a new vision on Brazilian Music in The Netherlands.

Later on, still in partnership with dancer and choreographer Claudia Trajano, Lantyer collaborated with the World Cinema Amsterdam film festival along 3 years when curated a showcase of film Brazilian documentaries (2005-2013) .
6. PHOTO RESTORATION

     

Lantyer spent 10 years working with Dutch restorer and conservator Michiel Kort (FotoZorg), a major specialist in recovering vintage negatives. She learned to restore and conserve glass plate’s negatives and a variety of old photo-printing techniques (2004-2012). Working with Kort, she helped recovering the archives of major institutions such as Dutch museums, the Dutch National Archive, the Dutch Royal Family, plus companies and publishers. A striking experience that is in the basis of her art projects on memory.




7. ART, PHOTOGRAPHY & IMAGE PLATFORMS

Besides her autoral projects, she created the plataform Fotografia & Cultura (2012-2018) and developed, in partnership with Teatro Munganga, the analog program Talks on Photography, in Amsterdam (2015).

    


8. STORIES WE HOLD - ART PROJECT

In 2009 Lantyer began an artistic research on women, photography and memory, investigating official historic documents and the photo-albuns of her own family. Her intetion was tracing the presence (and absence) of women in the official history of the region where she was born and within her family. The work has been presented in talks, lectures and projections in universities, museums and institutions since 2015 in Brazil and Europe.

   
   





9. THE MOUNTAIN AS A METAPHOR: EXCLUSION, ANONIMITY AND INVISIBILITY OF THE MIGRANT WOMAN ARTIST - MASTER THESIS AND ART PROJECT

Her most recent reseach investigates the position of the woman artist in the context of immigration. The project addresses the invisibility and the obstacles the migrant woman artist faces to find a place in the European art spaces. The research developed within  her Master in Arts program by the Universidade do Porto, Portuga (2021)l.