Laura Lima’s ICA show uses moving easels and staged absurdity

Brazilian conceptualist Laura Lima’s first solo presentation in the UK at the ICA in London stages a series of surreal, participatory encounters, including a life-drawing class in which easels and models sit on moving wooden platforms, a Guardian review said.

The handout for the show emphasises randomness, unpredictability and “Epicurus’s atomist theory”, but the review notes the platforms behave like “giant roombas with sensors”, meandering in preprogrammed areas. Viewers are invited to participate as the moving platforms force them to crane and turn to see the model.

Other pieces described include a set of keys with a human arm reaching under a wall to grab them, a red parasol on motorised wheels, and a fridge holding images frozen in ice that visitors are meant to remove and defrost. The reviewer called some moments absurd or funny at first, but said the ice images were “not hugely worth it”.

The review argues Lima asks viewers to find significance in the unexpected without offering substantive guidance, describing the show as heavily loaded with “half-baked philosophy and shoddy conceptualism” and ultimately more silly than meaningful. Laura Lima: The Drawing Drawing is at the ICA, London until 29 March.