Sonia Gomes

Sonia Gomes at Cotton Exchange Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Installation view. Documented: Hiato, 2019. Timbre, from Raíz series, 2018. Photography: Rob Battersby

Sonia Gomes at Cotton Exchange Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Installation view. Documented: Sem título, da série Lugar para um corpo, 2014. Hiato, 2019. Photography: Ben Nuttall

Sonia Gomes, Sem título, da série Lugar para um corpo, 2014.Installation view at Cotton Exchange Building,Liverpool Biennial 2021.Photography: Ben Nuttall

Sonia Gomes, Sem título, da série Lugar para um corpo (detail), 2014.Installation view at Cotton Exchange Building,Liverpool Biennial 2021.Photography: Ben Nuttall

Sonia Gomes, Timbre, from Raíz series, 2018. Installation view at Cotton Exchange Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021.Photography: Ben Nuttall

Sonia Gomes, Timbre, from Raíz series (detail), 2018. Installation view at Cotton Exchange Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Ben Nuttall

Sonia Gomes, Tecendo Amanhã, 2018. Installation view at Cotton Exchange Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Stuart Whipps

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Sonia Gomes (b. 1948, Caetanópolis, Brazil) lives and works in  São Paulo, Brazil. Gomes’ work binds together cultural movements and traditions that are intrinsically linked to the affirmation of memory, identity and the transformative power of creation in situations of vulnerability and invisibility. Through the use of fabric, thread, found and gifted objects, her multi-dimensional, sometimes biomorphic sculptures and structures stand as insistent placeholders for the absent or unseen body. These gestural inquiries refer to the body itself, as a way to decolonize the past and reclaim the present to reconstitute and celebrate both the self and her black heritage. Recent exhibitions include Museum Frieder Burda, Germany (2019); Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil (2018); Turner Contemporary, UK (2017); and 56th Venice Biennale, Italy (2015).

Project Description

Sonia Gomes presented four fabric sculptures at the Liverpool Cotton Exchange Building. Gomes constructs her structures using only materials that have been handed to her by others – taking on errant leftovers and combining them to create sites of intense encounter and entanglement. Mainly consisting of second-hand clothing and wires, Gomes’s transformation of disowned and unwanted materials gives them a new significance and life. The sculptures metaphorically bear the memories of the materials’ original owners, tying together their collective consciousness to create a knotty and guttural form. Gomes trusts that every material is imbued with latency of life, imagining her sculptures as bodies that absorb and retell the multiple memories of the ‘Other’.

This loan is supported by the British Council.

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