Sharjah Art Foundation presents I like to like what others are liking, the most comprehensive solo exhibition of Brazilian artist Leda Catunda outside her home country to date. On view from 26 September 2025 to 8 February 2026 at Galleries 4 and 5 in Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, the survey navigates four decades of Catunda’s practice, tracing the transformation of her art from figurative painting to hybrid forms that explore materiality, abstraction and dimensionality.

Taking its title from a quote by the artist, I like to like what others are liking explores the complex entanglements of taste, desire and identity. 

Catunda played a vital role in reshaping Brazil’s art scene in the 1980s, blurring the line between painting and sculpture. With a distinctly process-driven approach, the artist drew inspiration for her inventive formal vocabulary from pop culture sources, including everyday
consumer goods and household items such as printed bedspreads, T-shirts and upholstery.

By the 1990s, Catunda began crafting her signature ‘soft paintings’. In works such as Barriga [Belly] and Duas Barrigas[Two Bellies] (both 1993), painting merges with sculpture, transforming the bulging surfaces into spaces of both emotional and physical resonance.

In recent years, the artist’s work has taken on a baroque intensity. Pleated drapes, lush ornamentation and proliferating flaps invite us to consider the limits and mechanisms of aesthetics. Duas línguas [Two tongues] (2021), Gomos[Segments] (2023) and the ‘Escamosa’ [Scaly] series (2021–2023) unleash a cascade of tongue-shaped forms that conjure the verdant Brazilian landscape, while Caprichosa [Capricious] (2024) and Mil saias [Thousand skirts] (2025) turn layered fabrics and repurposed garments into dense constructs. In Gotas transparentes [Transparent drops] (2021), light filters through stacked textiles, casting coloured shadows out into the surrounding space.

The exhibition includes a selection of Catunda’s works on paper—watercolours, monotypes and collages—that serve as both standalone works and exploratory studies for her large-scale ‘painting-objects’. An additional archival display from the artist’s personal holdings offers important insights about the conditions of the Brazilian art scene, providing context for Catunda’s material and conceptual experimentation. 

Leda Catunda: I like to like what others are liking is curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, Director and President of Sharjah Art Foundation, with Meera Madhu, Curatorial Assistant at the Foundation. 

To book your tickets, visit sharjahart.org.

About Leda Catunda

A key figure in Brazilian contemporary art since the 1980s, Leda Catunda (b. 1961, São Paulo) is known for reimagining abstract painting and sculpture. Departing from the country's once predominant conceptual art movement, her practice constructs a visual lexicon that encompasses both pop culture and craftwork. Catunda’s works break from the picture plane and embrace a ‘poetics of softness’ that echoes the experience of navigating our modern image world. Among the artist’s recent exhibitions are Paisagem Selvagem, Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro (2024); Leda Catunda: EUFORIA, ICA Milano, Milan (2023); and Leda Catunda & Alejandra Seeber, MALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2021). Her works are included in important public collections, such as Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo; MOCA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Portugal.

About Sharjah Art Foundation

Sharjah Art Foundation is an advocate, catalyst and producer of contemporary art within the Emirate of Sharjah and the surrounding region, in dialogue with the international arts community. The Foundation advances an experimental and wide-ranging programmatic model that supports the production and presentation of contemporary art, preserves and celebrates the distinct culture of the region and encourages a shared understanding of the transformational role of art. The Foundation’s core initiatives include the long-running Sharjah Biennial, featuring contemporary artists from around the world; the annual March Meeting, a convening of international arts professionals and artists; grants and residencies for artists, curators and cultural producers; ambitious and experimental commissions and a range of travelling exhibitions and scholarly publications.

About Sharjah 


Sharjah is the third largest of the seven United Arab Emirates, and the only one bridging the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Reflecting the deep commitment to the arts, architectural preservation and cultural education embraced by its ruler, Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi, Sharjah is home to more than 20 museums and has long been known as the cultural hub of the United Arab Emirates. It was named UNESCO's Arab Capital of Culture for 1998 and the UNESCO World Book Capital for 2019.

Media Contact

Alyazeyah Al Marri      
alyazeyah@sharjahart.org
+971 (0)6 5444113