BIOGRAPHY
Neyde Lantyer is a Brazilian-born artist, curator, critic, and activist based in the Netherlands. Her multidisciplinary work reflects on women, memory, migration and society, mainly intersected by politics, feminism, nostalgia and reminiscences. Her artistic practice makes use of a wide range of media and formats, such as video performances, installations, photography, printing, sculpture and narrative, plus research and activism, eventually exploring her own image as a means of expression. She studied Fine Arts at the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, and obtained a Master's degree in Fine Arts/Intermedia from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, Portugal. In the Netherlands, she attended the program Histories and Theories of Photography at the Art Academy of the Leiden University (2008–2009) plus several minor trajects in photography, printing, video and cinema. Lantyer’s artistic career began in the 1990s, in Brazil, where she was diligently engaged in experimentation and activism while holding her first exhibitions.
Lantyer began her artistic career in Brazil in the 1990s, where she combined activism with experimentation and presented her first exhibitions. In the Netherlands, after a turning point work experience in photographic conservation and restoration (2002–2012), she shifted her focus towards memory and archive. Her long-term project "Stories We Carry” began as a search for hidden female identities in her own family history through photographs and documents. It then evolved into investigating the disappearance of women from the official archives of the "Canudos' War”, a historical battle that took place in her native region, in the last decade of the 1800s. The study also examined the female absence from the literary canon "Os Sertões”, (Euclides da Cunha, 1904), a book that narrates the conflict and is arguably one of the most influential of Brazilian literature. How to articulate personal and collective memory by means of art, using installations, archive, and museographic practices was the primary inquiry posed by the project. Inspired by philosopher Walter Banjamin, the second concern was whether personal-poetic narratives, reminicences and representation could challenge power relations and inequality in society.
Another of her major projects, “The Mountain as a Metaphor”, which derivates from her Master essay “The Mountain as a Metaphor: Exclusion, Anonymity and Invisibility of the Migrant Woman Artist (2021)”, contemplates the woman artist in her seek for internationalisation. The study offers a comprehensive look into the precarious position of displaced female artists in Europe. Given that the migrant condition is usually marked by exclusion, discrimination, and failures of various kinds, such position assumes even more dramatic dimensions when considering gender and the persistent gender inequality in the arts. Women migrant artists may encounter obstacles that could pose a threat to their artistic practice, ultimately leading to invisibility, exclusion and oblivion, and potentially risking their own existence as artists. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's thesis on symbolic capital and social destiny addresses the negative social cleavages and lack of power that characterise such positions, helping to frame the failure of the migrant artist in the thesis. Lantyer’s artistic approach on the subject with installations, video performances, text art, sculpture and photographs eventually becomes a reflection of her own private and social dilemmas as a migrant artist herself.
Over the past few years, she has developed and curated a series of art initiatives centred on women artists and gender inequality in the arts. Most recently, she launched the platform Women House / Casa de Mulheres, following the seminar Female Protagonisms in Art, Architecture, and Design at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and the group exhibition Casa de Mulheres (Women House) at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (MAM-BA), both organised in collaboration with scholar and curator Alejandra Hernandez Muñoz in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, in 2024. The initiative continued in 2025 with the exhibition Women House at NDSM FUSE in Amsterdam. Across these projects, gender inequality in the arts has been a central concern. Previously, in 2018, she co-curated The Female Body in Transit, a project addressing women and migration, in collaboration with scholar Patricia Schor (UvA) at Studio K in Amsterdam. She also curated Ocupação Jardim at the Museum of Art of Bahia (MAB) in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, which brought together the work of six women artists.
More info here:
https://www.womenhouse.art/
Lantyer began her artistic career in Brazil in the 1990s, where she combined activism with experimentation and presented her first exhibitions. In the Netherlands, after a turning point work experience in photographic conservation and restoration (2002–2012), she shifted her focus towards memory and archive. Her long-term project "Stories We Carry” began as a search for hidden female identities in her own family history through photographs and documents. It then evolved into investigating the disappearance of women from the official archives of the "Canudos' War”, a historical battle that took place in her native region, in the last decade of the 1800s. The study also examined the female absence from the literary canon "Os Sertões”, (Euclides da Cunha, 1904), a book that narrates the conflict and is arguably one of the most influential of Brazilian literature. How to articulate personal and collective memory by means of art, using installations, archive, and museographic practices was the primary inquiry posed by the project. Inspired by philosopher Walter Banjamin, the second concern was whether personal-poetic narratives, reminicences and representation could challenge power relations and inequality in society.
Another of her major projects, “The Mountain as a Metaphor”, which derivates from her Master essay “The Mountain as a Metaphor: Exclusion, Anonymity and Invisibility of the Migrant Woman Artist (2021)”, contemplates the woman artist in her seek for internationalisation. The study offers a comprehensive look into the precarious position of displaced female artists in Europe. Given that the migrant condition is usually marked by exclusion, discrimination, and failures of various kinds, such position assumes even more dramatic dimensions when considering gender and the persistent gender inequality in the arts. Women migrant artists may encounter obstacles that could pose a threat to their artistic practice, ultimately leading to invisibility, exclusion and oblivion, and potentially risking their own existence as artists. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's thesis on symbolic capital and social destiny addresses the negative social cleavages and lack of power that characterise such positions, helping to frame the failure of the migrant artist in the thesis. Lantyer’s artistic approach on the subject with installations, video performances, text art, sculpture and photographs eventually becomes a reflection of her own private and social dilemmas as a migrant artist herself.
Over the past few years, she has developed and curated a series of art initiatives centred on women artists and gender inequality in the arts. Most recently, she launched the platform Women House / Casa de Mulheres, following the seminar Female Protagonisms in Art, Architecture, and Design at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and the group exhibition Casa de Mulheres (Women House) at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (MAM-BA), both organised in collaboration with scholar and curator Alejandra Hernandez Muñoz in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, in 2024. The initiative continued in 2025 with the exhibition Women House at NDSM FUSE in Amsterdam. Across these projects, gender inequality in the arts has been a central concern. Previously, in 2018, she co-curated The Female Body in Transit, a project addressing women and migration, in collaboration with scholar Patricia Schor (UvA) at Studio K in Amsterdam. She also curated Ocupação Jardim at the Museum of Art of Bahia (MAB) in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, which brought together the work of six women artists.
More info here:
https://www.womenhouse.art/
