"/>
Laima Leyton is a London-based artist and musician with roots in São Paulo’s contemporary art scene. Her practice fuses music, performance, education and readymade, using sound as a central tool to build immersive narratives that often invite audience interaction. Through questions, actions and collective participation, she creates connections between herself, her collaborators and the public, an approach that runs throughout both her solo work and artistic partnerships. Her reputation in the music world is firmly established through her work as one half of Mixhell alongside her husband, Iggor Cavalera (Sepultura and Cavalera Conspiracy), as well as through her collaborations with Soulwax.
With her debut album Home released in 2019, the producer, musician, activist, artist, mother and teacher united her multifaceted talents. Home explored the tension between the dual drivers of Leyton's life: domesticity and creativity. Inspired by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Bill Viola and Laurie Anderson, Laima's recordings expressed her daily routine: "It's almost like a family photo album in another format," says the artist. Rather than stage the live show in the usual performance spaces she decided to manifest the theme and intimacy of the record by bringing it directly into people's homes; the Guardian heralded this as "Domestic Disco".
One performance happened at the home of art journalist and writer, Hettie Judah, who introduced her to Richard Saltoun, which led to a year long invitation at the gallery to compose a response to On Hannah Arendt: Eight Proposals for Exhibition, and for each of the eight chapters of Arendt's book, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. Titled collectively as Infinite Past, Infinite Future and Now, the works, each composed of a sonic piece and a video, engage with themes of time, culture, truth and spirituality.
Leyton was selected - with Lexy Morvaridi - as Participation Resident Artist at London's Gasworks Gallery, they together formed InnerSwell, an art duo incorporating sound, rooted in Pauline Olivero's pedagogy of "Deep Listening". She also took part in Cucosonic (an IPoW project) raising awareness about the biodiversity of the Colombian Rainforest, releasing an album that included musicians Onsulade, Brian Eno, and Martin Ware. Alongside her work as a teacher and activist, Laima Leyton works closely with In Place of War, a global organisation that empowers people living in conflict zones and crisis-affected communities to use music, art and culture as tools for survival and change.
With Ipow she has taught music production in Uganda, Tanzania and Palestine and from there went on to help develop GRRRL with women from Ghana, Bangladesh, Brazil, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and the UK. Working with GRRRL transformed Laima’s perspective on women in music, making her realise how male-dominated her own experience of the industry had been. The artist is an activist, an artist, a godmother of four and a proud mother of five, and she's always looking for ways to share music, art, performance, and to collaborate. Her collaborative work, Itoma'a dure itoma'a, was recently exhibited at the 36th São Paulo Bienal (2025-2026).