Brazilian artist Ana Hupe presents Slash-and-burn, her first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom, as part of the Casa Tomada project curated by Cecilia Vilela and hosted at RHFA, in southeast London.
The installation transforms the gallery’s intimate 3m-wide cube into a space for reflection, where the histories of coffee, as both global commodity and social ritual, intertwine with questions of labour, exploitation, and time. Drawing on archival material from Bahia, Brazil, Hupe reimagines colonial imagery through a mix of collage, textile, and scent.
At the heart of Slash-and-burn lies the dual nature of coffee: a driver of productivity and an excuse to pause. Hupe’s layered compositions juxtapose 19th-century depictions of Brazil by European artists such as Jean-Baptiste Debret and Johann Moritz Rugendas with icons of coffee culture, from the Italian Bialetti moka pot to the Ethiopian cini cup. These visual fragments are reassembled using batik printing on jute, repurposing old coffee sacks with their fragile and flickering surfaces that evoke instability, erasure, and resistance.
The installation is completed by the smell and texture of coffee mixed with soil, grounding the visitor’s experience in the land itself. Referencing the agricultural technique of “slash-and-burn”, once a regenerative practice and now distorted by industrial farming, Hupe’s work reflects on the need to let the soil, and ourselves, rest.
A book resting on a side table unfolds the project further, rewarding those who take the time to linger. “Time, key to productivity, is also key to resistance, from physiological rest to workers’ strikes to coffee breaks,” writes curator Cecilia Vilela.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1983, Ana Hupe is a multimedia artist and researcher whose practice interrogates colonial archives and their blind spots. Her works are held in major Brazilian institutions such as MAM Rio, MAR, and IPHAN, and in international collections including the UK’s ESCALA. She currently lectures in Art History at the Burg Giebichenstein Art Academy in Halle, Germany.
Slash-and-burn is the first chapter of Casa Tomada, a trilogy of immersive installations inviting visitors to enter alone and experience each artist’s world at their own rhythm. The series, presented in collaboration between curator Cecilia Vilela and Ron Henocq, continues with exhibitions in November 2025 and February 2026.
Info
Ana Hupe: Slash-and-burn
Casa Tomada / Exhibition 1 of 3
26 September – 19 October 2025
RHFA – 92 Webster Road, London
Curated by: Cecilia Vilela | Hosted by: Ron Henocq
Opening times: Fri 12–8pm | Sat–Sun 12–6pm
Additional opening: Thursday 16 October (Frieze Week), 12–8pm
Photos: Nicholas Burns
