Muamba Posy was first exhibited on the moors of Penistone Hill in Haworth, West Yorkshire as part of the Wild Uplands sculpture trail. Its large, organic forms and vivid colours are inspired by the Hill’s ever changing cycles of nature, where life has continuously adapted over time.

Around 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous period, Penistone Hill was a tropical forest with a climate similar to the Amazon. The sculptures draw on the flora and fauna of that era. They also take inspiration from the present day landscape, echoing the shapes of plants such as heather and bilberries. Their metallic shades reference the metal loving species that grow in the mineral-rich soil.

Da Silva also considers her own identity as a Brazilian living in the UK, and the merging of cultures. The title, Muamba Posy, combines Brazilian Portuguese and English words. Muamba is a slang term for smuggling goods across borders, and Posy is a small bouquet of flowers. She views the sculptures as an offering of fragments from another time and place, as the title suggests.

Muamba Posy continues ideas from her earlier work Muamba Grove (2019), which can be found in YSP’s Lower Park. They explore movement and transformation, bodies in flux shaped by the landscape and each other, inviting interaction between sculpture, the human body, and the environment.

Vanessa da Silva (b.1976) works across sculpture, installation, and performance, exploring nationality, identity, migration, and displacement. She studied painting at the Royal College of Art, London, and has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally.

Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by Bradford 25 UK City of Culture. 

Wild Uplands was supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Yorkshire Water, Natural England, British Council, The Linbury Trust and the Henry Moore Foundation.