Ernesto Neto (born July 2, 1964) is a Brazilian contemporary artist known for large-scale, immersive installations that combine sculpture, architecture, textiles, movement, touch, sound, and scent. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Neto has become one of Brazil’s most internationally recognized contemporary artists. His practice is closely associated with the legacy of Brazilian Neo-Concrete art, while extending its interest in participation and bodily experience into expansive environments that visitors can physically enter and explore.
Neto studied at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro and began exhibiting in the 1980s. His early work developed around sculpture and experimentation with unconventional materials. By the late 1980s and 1990s, he was increasingly using flexible fabrics, nylon, and polyamide stockings, creating soft structures that challenged conventional ideas about sculpture as something rigid, permanent, and separate from the viewer. He began exhibiting internationally in the late 1980s and presented his work outside Brazil from the mid-1990s onward.
A defining characteristic of Neto’s work is its physical and sensory quality. Rather than simply looking at his sculptures, visitors are often encouraged to touch them, walk through them, sit inside them, or otherwise interact with them. His large biomorphic structures frequently resemble organs, plants, roots, membranes, nests, caves, or other forms associated with living systems. Stretch fabrics may be suspended from ceilings or stretched between architectural surfaces, while soft forms are filled with lightweight materials such as Styrofoam pellets. Some works incorporate aromatic spices, allowing smell to become part of the artistic experience.
This emphasis on participation reflects Neto’s interest in the relationship between body, nature, and culture. His installations are not intended merely to represent biological organisms; instead, they create environments in which the visitor’s own body becomes part of the work. His practice explores the tension between nature inside the human body and nature outside it, while emphasizing a balance between freedom and fragility. Neto’s approach has been influenced by Brazilian Neo-Concrete artists, who sought to move art beyond purely visual perception toward physical and participatory experience.
Among Neto’s important works is Navedenga (1998), an installation made from translucent Lycra that stretched between floor and ceiling. Visitors were invited to remove their shoes and physically pass through the structure, making their movement an essential part of the work. In 2006, he created Léviathan Thot, a monumental installation presented in Paris as part of the Festival d’Automne. The work contributed to his international reputation, and the same year Neto was appointed a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France’s major cultural distinctions.
In 2001, Neto represented Brazil alongside Vik Muniz at the Venice Biennale. His installations appeared both in Brazil’s national pavilion and in the international exhibition at the Arsenale. In 2009, he presented Anthropodino at New York’s Park Avenue Armory. The enormous installation occupied approximately 55,000 square feet of the building’s Drill Hall, transforming the historic interior into an immersive environment.
Another significant project was GaiaMotherTree, presented in Zurich in 2018. Constructed primarily from hand-knotted cotton strips in shades of orange and yellow, the monumental structure resembled an enormous tree and functioned as both sculpture and social environment. Workshops for children and adults were organized beneath the installation, reinforcing Neto’s interest in collective participation and shared experience.
His later work has increasingly incorporated ideas of ecology, interconnectedness, healing, spirituality, and multispecies relationships. In 2019, Children of the Earth incorporated spices, crystals, and musical instruments to engage multiple senses. His SunForceOceanLife uses large woven structures inspired by the life-giving forces of the sun and ocean.
In 2024, Neto presented Nosso Barco Tambor Terra at Lisbon’s Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology. The large-scale installation incorporated musical instruments and was periodically activated through a musical program, further expanding his practice from sculpture toward communal and performative experience.
Ernesto Neto’s work occupies a distinctive position between sculpture, installation, architecture, performance, craft, and environmental art. His soft, organic forms deliberately contrast with conventional monumental sculpture, replacing hardness and distance with touch, movement, smell, sound, and human interaction. By turning exhibition spaces into environments that must be physically experienced, Neto challenges the traditional separation between artwork and audience and proposes art as a living, participatory encounter.