PRESENTATION: Sonia Gomes-O Mais Profundo É A Pele

Sonia Gomes combines secondhand textiles with everyday materials, such as furniture, driftwood, and wire, to create abstract sculptures that reclaim Afro-Brazilian traditions and feminized modes of artmaking from the margins of history. Gomes is a barrier-breaking figure as the first living Afro- Brazilian woman artist to have a monographic show, at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), in 2018.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

Born in 1948 in Caetanópolis, which is located in state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil and was once a textile hub, Sonia Gomes has cultivated a practice anchored by her deft and meticulous manipulation of varied materials. Featuring juxtaposing forms, colors, and media, Gomes’s abstract assemblages have pushed the boundaries of conventional sculpture, forging connections between memory and abstract imagery. In her exhibition “O Mais Profundo É A Pele”. Gomes will presents works from 2021 and 2022, including hanging, free-standing, and wall-mounted sculptures. The artist’s works often incorporate secondhand, gifted, and repurposed textiles; furniture; driftwood; wire; and other seemingly disparate materials. Through kneading, twisting, and stretching, she grapples with the stories and memories rooted in the fabrics, imbuing her resulting sculptures with personal and political resonances. In her laborious process for creating these multimedia works, Gomes considers sewing akin to drawing: a means to produce gestural marks and compositional balance. Two vibrant new works from the artist’s “Torções” sculpture series, which are included in the exhibition, reflect her interest in interactions between fabric and iron that create volume. Three pieces in the new series “Entre Pérola e Vergalhão” featuring freshwater pearls amid clusters of different fabrics evoke shells, cocoons, wombs, nests, and other natural incubators. Supported by rebars, these works stand between three and four feet tall, encouraging viewers to bend their bodies to fully experience their formal nuances. Among the other highlights in the show is the light installation “Constelação II” (2022), which projects the intricate linear forms of its constituent bird cage and fabric components as shadows against the gallery wall. In the way of two-dimensional works, the exhibition will spotlight eight new pieces from the artist’s Tela-Corpo (Canvas-Body) series, in which she experiments with curved arrangements of graphic media amid color fields. Two hanging sculptures from Gomes’s Relíquia (Relic) series will be in the show—these works feature ornate abstractions comprising lace, buttons, various metals, zippers, and other combinations of materials. A group of layered collages that depict vibrantly colored natural are on show. For these works, Gomes uses a wide range of materials, including Posca pens and watercolors, to make strokes, chromatic fields, arabesques, hatches, volutes, and stains. Utilizing papers of various textures, weights, and shades, the artist conjures new visual effects in each collage. A section of the exhibition is dedicated to new works on paper Gomes created as part of a collaboration with her studio assistant, Juliana dos Santos. These small-scale, lyrical works depict organic forms rendered with watercolor, acrylic, cotton lace, and other materials. A film documenting Gomes and dos Santos’s process and work in the artist’s São Paulo studio will also be on view.

Sonia Gomes began her art career mid-life, developing a practice of sewing and tying together found and gifted objects and textiles exploring notions of memory and identity. Often incorporating wire into her constructions, Gomes produces multi-dimensional sculptural works that hang from the ceiling, reach out from the walls, or rest on the ground. This act of binding remnants of disparate cultures and materials is deeply rooted in Gomes’s own story—she says: “My work is Black, it is feminine, and it is marginal. I am a rebel. I never worried about masking or stifling anything that might or might not fit standards of what is called art. I always sought nonconformity with things that are established. I had to overcome a lot of obstacles because I’m Black, because I was too old to be considered one of Brazilian art’s young talents. … My work is Brazilian”, As fabric is produced by weaving, knitting, or otherwise knotting independent threads together into one unit, or as discrete histories merge to inform one’s holistic identity, so too does Gomes unite the distinct narratives of her materials—ranging from gifted dresses, wedding invitations, pattern books—into one intuitive and singular work.

Photo: Sonia Gomes, Constelação II, 2022 © Sonia Gomes, Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery

Info: Pace Gallery, 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY, USA, duration: 4/11-17/12/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/