No Hay Banda

The exhibition takes its title from an iconic scene in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, in which the declaration “there is no band” exposes the illusion of performance. Here, silence becomes a space where focus sharpens through the value of contemplative time. In a cultural moment defined by acceleration, overabundance of information, and the relentless demand for productivity, No Hay Banda proposes quietness and restraint as deliberate artistic positions.

Vandria Borari is an Indigenous ceramic artist from the Borari territory of Alter do Chão, in the Brazilian Amazon. Her practice is grounded in ancestral knowledge systems and longstanding relationships between humans, plants, and the forest understood as a living body. For No Hay Banda, Borari presents Yupirungáwa (meaning “origin” in Nheengatu), a body of work developed through a dialogue between Indigenous knowledge and archaeobotanical research, in collaboration with anthropologist Myrtle Pearl Shock. This series comprises four monumental ceramic sculptures of Amazonian seeds, Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa), tucumã (Astrocaryum vulgare), forest muruci (Byrsonima crispa), and curuá (Ananas erectifolius), modelled on botanical remains from archaeological sites in the Lower Amazon. Enlarged to a human scale and finished with pigments recalling the carbonised materiality of excavated seeds, these works invite the viewer to learn from nature’s tempo. Through scale and material, Borari’s work foregrounds the forest as an interdependent system shaped by time and transmission across generations.

Petra Feriancová’s Playgrounds series unfolds as a quiet meditation on observation and lived experience. Developed over many years, the project brings together archival material and photographs, returning to public playgrounds as sites where memory, action, and abandonment intersect. The series spans generations: some images were taken by Feriancová’s father in the 1970s, while others were taken by the artist herself more than forty years later. Once spaces of play, these structures appear emptied of their original function, transformed into stages for reflection rather than activity. For Feriancová, the playground becomes a place of wandering and intentional looking, encountered differently across life stages: first as an observer, then through parenthood. Stripped of nostalgia, the images register subtle shifts in perception and duration, foregrounding moments of pause and quiet presence. In Playgrounds, Feriancová resists linear narratives, instead allowing meaning to emerge through accumulated observation and the slow passing of time. In addition, Feriancová will exhibit photographs from the Hands (2017–2025) series, which captures hands in constant motion yet without a specific end goal; these works favour intrinsic value over function.

Karoliina Hellberg’s work immerses the viewer in a pictorial realm shaped by repetition and resonance. Her paintings weave dream-like stories into the textures of the everyday, drawing on motifs such as interiors, plants, animals, and textiles that hover between memory and imagination. Working in the space between fantasy and recall, Hellberg employs intense colour and confident brushwork to collapse distinctions between foreground and background, flatten perspective, and subtly unsettle how we move through the image.

New compositions by Sofia Silva reflect a process of moving forwards and backwards through painting, cutting, and leaving fragments behind. Her works operate within restrained, sparsely inhabited spaces where light and surface are treated with measured precision. Camera bianca (2026) depicts an intimate domestic interior in which the silhouette of branches placed in a vase emerges along a thin line of light. Derived from an archival photograph of Venini vases, the composition remains minimal yet carefully modulated, articulated through subtle tonal gradations and inscribed with the phrase con tutto il cuore (“with all my heart”), taken from a Catholic prayer of confession. Detached from a specific time or place, the painting unfolds within a space defined by absence. A second, smaller work adopts a materially similar but conceptually opposed approach: combining a printed page with painterly interventions, it stages the collapse of silence and contemplation. Titled Non rompetemi i coglioni (Girl Interrupted While Reading), the work registers the difficulty of maintaining solitude and focus in an environment marked by turbulence and informational overload. 

The exhibition approaches silence as an active condition: a method of resistance and a generative framework for making. Working through practices defined by restraint, withholding, and careful attention, the participating artists foreground minimal actions, subtle shifts, and processes that resist pageantry. Viewers are invited to listen closely, to remain with uncertainty, and to encounter meaning as something that builds gradually. 

Notes to Editors:

Vandria Borari (born 1983, Alter do Chão, Amazonia, Brazil). Lives and works Buhl, Germany.

Vandria Borari is a ceramicist and Indigenous activist from the Borari people of Baixo Tapajós, Pará, Brazil. She holds two Bachelor’s degrees in Law (Federal University of Western Pará, Santarém, Brazil) and Tourism (Esperança Institute of Higher Education, Santarém, Brazil), respectively. From 2016 to 2021, Borari worked as a Cultural Producer in the village of Alter do Chão, Pará, organising cultural events and exhibitions, including Mutak – Mukameẽsawa Tapajowara Kitiwara (2021), an Indigenous art exhibition of the Lower Tapajó region.

In 2024, Borari received the Pro Helvetia Co-creation grant. Awarded to two artists, the grant supports collaborative research aimed at strengthening intercultural exchange and creative partnerships. The artist collaborated with Indian artist Ishita Chakraborty on the ongoing project Fluid Forest, 2024-present. Borari was also awarded the 2023 SEED Award by the Prince Claus Fund, the Netherlands.

Developed during her 2023 Speculative Ecologies residency in Brazil, Borari’s Yupirungáwa series has been exhibited in significant exhibitions and environmentalist projects globally. Borari also participated in the 2021 group project SÜDSTELLIUM, in which artists occupied billboards on the U1 subway line at the Kottbusser Tor station, Berlin.

Borari has presented talks, lectures, and symposia for several prestigious institutions – selected examples include Duke University, 2022, North Carolina, USA; United Nations, 2019, Geneva, Switzerland; and Museum der Kulturen Basel, 2025, Basel, Switzerland.

Petra Feriancová (born 1977, former Czechoslovakia) lives and works in Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

Petra Feriancová graduated from the Bratislava Institute of Art and Design in 1995, followed by the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava, 1996, and L’Accademia delle Belle Arti, Rome, 2002. In 2016, she completed her PhD in the Department of Intermedia and Multimedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Feriancová is a two-time recipient of ArtVerona’s Premio Level 0 Award, in 2015 and 2019, respectively. In 2010, she was granted the prestigious Oskár Čepan Award for young Slovak visual artists, organised by the Foundation – Centre for Contemporary Art. Subsequently, Feriancová was awarded a six-week residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City.

In 2013, Feriancová was selected to represent the Czech and Slovak Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Together with Zbyněk Baladrán, she presented the joint exhibition Still the Same Place at the Pavilion in the Giardini. Feriancová has held solo exhibitions in prestigious institutions across Europe and beyond. Since 2016, the artist has exhibited with Elizabeth Xi Bauer; most recently, she presented the solo exhibition Echo’s Bones at the gallery’s Exmouth Market location. Feriancová’s works are part of several private and public collections, including the Slovak National Gallery, Slovak Republic; AGI Verona Collection, Italy; Fondazione Morra Greco, Italy; Palazzo Collicola Spoleto, Italy; Villa D’Este Tivoli, Italy; Collezione Planeta Palermo, Italy; Art Collection Telekom, Germany; and Mario Testino Collection, Peru.

Karoliina Hellberg (born in 1987 in Porvoo, Finland) lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.

After graduating from Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2013, Hellberg completed an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, in 2015. Earlier this year, Hellberg received the Visual Artist Award from the Marcus Collins Memorial Fund and the Swedish Literature Association, Finland. Previously, Hellberg was the recipient of the Didrichsen Pro Arte Award (2018), and in 2019, the Didrichsen Art Museum held a solo exhibition of Hellberg’s work as part of receiving the award.

Participating in numerous residencies across Europe, including the Cité Internationale des Arts Residency, Paris, in 2023, Hellberg’s work has been commissioned by a variety of institutions. In 2022, the City of Helsinki’s Art Collection commissioned Lilacs, Anemones and Wind, 2022, for permanent display at Kallio General Upper Secondary School, Helsinki. Hellberg’s practice is supported by Art Promotion Centre Finland, and in 2025, Hellberg received a three-year grant from the Finnish National Council for the Visual Arts.

Hellberg’s work was included in the recent group exhibition Freshly Painted at the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland. Her work has been exhibited extensively across Europe in both solo and group exhibitions. In 2025, Hellberg’s work Night-time garden, 2023, was included in the exhibition Nordic noir: works on paper from Edvard Munch to Mamma Andersson at the British Museum, London, and subsequently acquired by the collection.

Hellberg’s works are collected in public and private collections including Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; Didrichsen Art Museum, Helsinki; HAM Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection, Espoo, Finland; and Hämeenlinna Art Museum, Hämeenlinna, Finland.

Following her inaugural 2024 solo exhibition in the UK, at Elizabeth Xi Bauer, Deptford, titled Labyrinth, Hellberg will open her second solo exhibition at Elizabeth Xi Bauer later this year.

Sofia Silva (born in 1990 in Padova, Italy) lives and works in Padova, Italy.

In 2012, Silva completed a BA in Fine Arts and, in 2016, an MA in History of Art and Preservation of Artistic Heritage. In 2019, Silva participated in the Q-Rated Nuoro residency, organised by La Quadriennale di Roma and Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro (MAN), Italy.

Parallel to her artistic practice, Silva has written for various publications and catalogues, including La Quadriennale di Roma, Italy; Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles, France; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Germany; Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and Kunsthalle Wien, Austria.

Silva has exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions across Europe, the United Kingdom, South America and the United States, including Barbati Gallery, Venice, Italy; Palacio Libertad Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Cultural Centre, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Flowers Gallery, London, UK; Galerie Romero Paprocki, Paris, France; and Triennale Milano, Milano, Italy. In 2025, Silva presented Spoiled by Freud, a solo exhibition at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York City, USA. Silva’s solo exhibition, Private Index, will open this May (2026) at Braunsfelder, Cologne, Germany.

No Hay Banda, at CFA, Milan, in partnership with Elizabeth Xi Bauer, London, will be Silva’s first time exhibiting with Elizabeth Xi Bauer.

No Hay Banda will run from 29th May – 26th June 2026, at CFA: Via Gioacchino Rossini 3, 20121, Milan, open Tuesday through to Friday, 3 – 7 pm or by appointment. A Private View will be held on 28th May 2026, 6 – 9 pm.

CFA: Via Gioacchino Rossini 3, 20121, Milan, Italy

Elizabeth Xi Bauer locations:
20-22 Exmouth Market, London, EC1R 4QE
Fuel Tank, 8-12 Creekside, London, SE8 3DX

For further information, press inquiries, or to schedule a visit, contact Paige Ashley at paige@lizxib.com