Julia Retz (1987) is a Brazilian artist and designer living between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. She holds a BA in visual arts and design, with a focus on film, from Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2011), and a master’s degree in interior architecture from the Sandberg Institute (2013).

Her work develops at the intersection of visual arts, furniture design, and interior architecture. Her projects have been presented in national and international exhibitions, such as Órganos Inespecíficos at MACBA (Buenos Aires); Arte Naïf – Nenhum Museu a Menos at EAV – Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro); Montes No Visibles at Tomas Redrado Art (Miami); Flâneuses? at La Box_ENSA (Bourges); and Project Expanded Performance: The City School at Stroom (The Hague). Her solo shows include An Apartment for a Gymnastic Teacher – Part II at The Office of the Imaginary (Amsterdam) and Space Proposals at CAVE Gallery (Tokyo). Her design practice extends to public commissions, including furniture pieces for institutes in Brazil and Estonia.

Julia has participated in several artist residencies, including Pivô Pesquisa (São Paulo), Capacete (Rio de Janeiro), Salta Art Foundation, and European Exchange Academy (Germany). She has also lectured and conducted workshops at international institutions.

Plano Urbano – Cidade Radiante (2025) is based on a fragment of the urban plan of Ville Radieuse (Radiant City), the utopian city and theoretical model designed by architect Le Corbusier in 1931. Rubber is used in thin layers of overlapping liquid latex, forming a semi-rigid, translucent, and elastic surface. This materiality creates a tension between fragility and structure, allowing light to pass through the work and reveal the network of seams and the printed design.

The piece is part of the artist’s investigation into modernist cities and their urban plans. It proposes a reflection on the meaning of constructing and planning utopian cities in territories deemed “empty,” questioning the notions of occupation, development, and modernization that underpinned the modernist project and its colonizing dimension.