Made out of used fabrics and ordinary—usually discarded—materials, Sonia Gomes' colourful sculptures exude a sense of corporeality. Drawing from her lived experiences as an Afro-Brazilian person, and from the history of the African diaspora in Brazil, Gomes explores the entangled relationship between labour and commerce, and the colonial past and present.
Read MoreSonia Gomes constructs her sculptures from second-hand materials. She began this practice as a child in the Brazilian city of Caetanópolis, which used to be a centre for textile production, where she would incorporate leftover fabric into jewellery. In the wall-hanging Lágrima (Tear) (2014), Gomes created a tear-shaped cluster of vividly patterned fabrics against a blue tablecloth belonging to a friend's family. Gomes also often references memories of her childhood—the rituals of her maternal grandmother, who was a shaman, and her paternal family's Catholic customs—and Brazilian dance in her work.
Whether suspended from the ceiling, hung on the wall, or presented on the floor, Sonia Gomes' sculptures convey a tension between lightness, fragility, and hardness. This is especially evident in the 'Raiz' series (2018), in which scraps of fabric, netting, and ropes are bound to pieces of driftwood. The series' Picaré sculpture possibly evokes a human figure with outstretched limbs, while Correnteza juxtaposes rounded fabric forms with the lines of the wood.
The corporeal presence implicit in many of Sonia Gomes' works is exemplified in Lona (2010): a woven wall sculpture that Hyperallergic's Cleo Abramian described as resembling a 'deflated lung'. Another frequent motif is the birdcage, which appears to harness the wood in Aninhado (2019). The birdcage serves as a potent symbol of freedom and the struggles to obtain it, and references the work of American poet and activist Maya Angelou. Still I rise, Sonia Gomes' major solo exhibition at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo in 2018, takes its title from Angelou's famous 1978 poem.
Sonia Gomes / Marina Perez Simão, Pace Gallery, New York (2020); Sonia Gomes, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2019); A Vida Renasce, Sempre, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Rio de Janeiro (2018); A.R. Penck and Sonia Gomes, Hic Svnt Dracones, New York (2017); O Ritmo da Linha, Espaço Cultural do Fórum Lafayette, Brazil (2011).
Mecarõ. Amazonia in the Petitgas Collection, Montpellier Contemporain, France (2020); Unconscious Landscape: Works from the Ursula Hauser Collection, Hauser & Wirth Somerset (2019); Experimenting with Materiality, Lévy Gorvy, Zürich (2019); O Triângulo Atlântico, 11a Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2018); Everyday Poetics, Seattle Art Museum (2017); Revival, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (2017); All the World's Futures, 56th Venice Biennale (2015).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2020
Exhibition view: Sonia Gomes, When the Sun Rises in Blue, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (6 November–18 December 2021). © Sonia Gomes. Courtesy the artist, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/ Tokyo and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo/Brussels/New York. Photo: Josh Schaedel.
Ocula Advisory spotlights Sonia Gomes's alchemical approach to sculpture.
Bridging almost a century of Brazilian art, [Visions of Brazil: Reimagining Modernity from Tarsila to Sonia][0] at [Blum & Poe in New York][1] (30 April–22 June 2019), hosted in collaboration with
The 19th edition of Videobrasil shifted all its programming towards the theme 'Southern Panoramas.' In other words, the Global South and its social fabric—its diasporas, hybrid identities, and migration flows.
We select our favourite works from Art Basel Miami Beach, which returns in full force after its 2020 cancellation.
Blum & Poe present an exhibition of work by Sonia Gomes, one of the most important living artists to have come out of Brazil.
Explore artwork highlights selected by the Advisory team and showing at artmonte-carlo.
With her New York debut on the horizon, the Afro-Brazilian artist, known for her seductive, textile-based sculptures, is finally, and rightfully, receiving international recognition.
BADEN-BADEN, Germany — Using recycled textiles, driftwood, and furniture, Brazilian artist Sonia Gomes creates oversized biomorphic sculptures that are palpably corporeal. In her Museum Frieder Burda
For almost four years the critic Karen Wright wrote a weekly column for Radar, the Independent newspaper's magazine, entitled In The Studio, which was based on nearly 200 visits to artists' stud
The exhibition of over 100 women artists currently on view at the Rubell Family Collection is difficult to review because the works do not all fit into the space and the decision was made to rotate them over the course of the show. The plan is to gradually replace some works with others, but because there doesn’t appear to be any overriding...
