Sonia Gomes

Sonia Gomes was born to a black mother and white father in Caetanópolis, a small town considered to be the birthplace of the textile industry in Brazil, in 1948.[3] Gomes joined the art world relatively late, at around the age of 45.[4]

Gomes combines secondhand textiles with everyday materials, such as furniture, driftwood, and wire, to create abstract sculptures that reclaim Afro-Brazilian traditions and feminized crafts from the margins of history. Her compositions stem from a spontaneous and casual practice of deconstructing and re-assembling everyday objects; Lágrima (Tear) (2014), for example, was made with a blue tablecloth that once belonged to her friend's family.[5] Through her recycling of used fabric, Gomes's work also evinces a principle of thrift that can be read both in terms of the consequence of Brazil's rapid and uneven industrial development and the accompanying culture of wasteful consumption and environmental destruction.[6] The artist is represented by Blum and Poe, Mendes Wood DM, and Pace Gallery.[7]

• When the sun rises in blue, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2021)[8]
• I Rise – I’m a Black Ocean, Leaping and Wide, Museum Frieder Burda and Salon Berlin, Baden-Baden/Berlin (2019)[9]
• Silence of color, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2019)[10]
• Still I Rise, MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo / Casa de Vidro, São Paulo (2018)[11]
• A vida renasce, sempre, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Rio de Janeiro (2018)[12]

• Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju, Korea (2021)[13]
• Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK (2021)[14]
• Unconscious Landscape – Works from the Ursula Hauser Collection, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, UK (2019)[15]
• Experimenting with Materiality, Lévy Gorvy, Zurich, Switzerland (2019)[16]
• Histórias Afro-Atlânticas, MASP, São Paulo, Brazil (2018)[17]
• O Triângulo Atlântico, 11ª Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2018)[18]
• Tissage, Tressage, Fondation Villa Datris, L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, France (2018)[19]
• Entangled, Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2017)[20]
• Revival, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, USA (2017)[21]
• 56ª Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2015)[22]