About the work

Sonia Gomes has created a forma guarda uma vida, 2025, especially for Whitechapel Gallery to accompany the exhibition Lygia Clark: The I and the You, 2 Oct 2024 – 12 Jan 2025.

Sonia Gomes’ edition for Whitechapel Gallery originated as a drawing, translated by the artist into a digital pigment print with hand cut elements. Gomes’ work is characterised by a deep engagement with the creation of layers and voluminosity, which reflect her interest in materiality and transformation. When Sonia's and Lygia Clark's practice encounters, we perceive that both artists share an intent to deconstruct and reconstruct forms, with repetition serving as a process for unravelling visual language.

In a forma guarda uma vida (translating in English to ‘the form holds a life’), we encounter three circles that appear to move in a delicate choreography, intersecting and entwining, as if embodying a dance of creation and dissolution. The tension between containment and liberation is palpable as the forms press against the paper's boundaries, hinting at their desire to transcend the flat plane. This is particularly evident when Sonia cuts into one of the circles, introducing a dimensional shift that breathes life into the work. By breaking through the surface, she invites the viewer to consider the piece not just as a drawing but as an object on the verge of sculptural existence, evoking a dialogue between two-dimensionality and the spatial experience of three dimensions.

The interplay of unfinished forms and voluminosity speaks to a broader exploration of life itself—fluid, evolving, and never fully contained—echoing the Brazilian tradition of Neo-Concretism, where the boundaries between art and life dissolve. Much like Clark's, Sonia's work reflects a desire to escape formal constraints and enter a space where art becomes lived, tactile, and deeply relational.

About the artist

Sonia Gomes (b. 1948, Caetanópolis, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo. Sonia Gomes weaves her work over the duration of time. The artist chooses materials that bring with them colors, textures, trims, and an indefinable set of memories. Each fabric, article of clothing, and accessory she uses has traveled its path and was dressed, stored, and altered before undergoing a final transformation in her studio.  

By combining actions such as brushing, twisting, stretching, tensioning, suspending, and wrapping, Gomes turns sewing into a kind of drawing. Her gestures produce traces and set stages of fabric handling, linking, balancing, and associating pieces in a body that, as if growing, takes shape, establishing relationships with the surrounding space.

Gomes, born in Caetanópolis in the interior of Minas Gerais, developed her relationship with art out of a constant need to produce a wide range of textile creations despite lacking access to a circulation channel for her work. The ambition to recreate the world around her through gestures of care, starting with the intimacy of the body, clothing, and home, inscribed her practice within contemporary art.

Selected exhibitions

The artist’s solo exhibitions include ...vivem no compasso do sol, Mendes Wood DM, Paris (2024); Sonia Gomes: sinfonia das cores, Octógono da Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo (2023); O mais profundo é a pele (Skin is the deepest part), Pace Gallery, New York (2022); Lágrima, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2021); When the sun rises in blue, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2021); I Rise – I'm a Black Ocean, leaping and Wide, Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden (2019); Sonia Gomes, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2019); Sonia Gomes & Marga Ledora, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2018); Ainda me levanto, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), e Casa de Vidro, São Paulo (2018); A vida renasce, sempre, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (MAC), Niterói (2018); Linhas em tramas, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2016); Nascer Uma Vez Após a Outra, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2014); Stitch In Time, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2012).

Group exhibitions include With My Eyes, The Holy See Pavilion, 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2024); Resilient Currents: On Communal Re-Existence, Thanks for Nothing, Paris (2024); Dos Brasis: arte e pensamento negro, SESC Quitandinha, Petrópolis (2024) and  SESC Belenzinho, São Paulo (2023);  Spin a Yarn, ANOTHER SPACE, New York (2024); Coreografias do impossível, 35th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo (2023); HARD/SOFT Textiles and Ceramics in Contemporary Art, Museum für angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna (2023); Making Their Mark, Shah Garg Foundation, New York (2023); Mãos: 35 anos da Mão Afro-Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), São Paulo (2023); Brasil Futuro: as formas da democracia, Museu Nacional, Brasília; Espaço Cultural Casa das Onze Janelas, Belém; Museu Solar Ferrão, Salvador (2023); Sensory Poetics: Collecting Abstraction, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,New York (2022); Front 2022: Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2022); Por muito tempo acreditei ter sonhado que era livre, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2022); Brazil Courage Before Expectation, Flag Art Foundation, New York (2022); Contramemória, Theatro Municipal de São Paulo, São Paulo (2022); Bispo do Rosário – Eu Vim: Aparição, Impregnação e Impacto, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo (2022); Imagens que não se comportam, Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro (2021); Carolina Maria de Jesus: Um Brasil para os brasileiros, Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS), São Paulo (2021); Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro (2021); Enciclopédia Negra, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo and Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro (2021); Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2021); The Stomach and the Port, 11th Liverpool Biennale, Liverpool (2021); Histórias Afro-Atlânticas, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), São Paulo (2018); O Triângulo Atlântico, 11th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre (2018); All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice (2015); Mão Afro-Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), São Paulo (1988).

Gomes’s work is included in prominent collections such as Centre Pompidou, Paris; MoMA, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museu Afro Brasil, São Paulo; Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo; Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London.