Mendes Wood DM is pleased to present Sonia Gomes’s first solo exhibition in Paris …vivem no compasso do sol. The exhibition features works from Gomes’s wide, encompassing production and includes floor, hanging, and wall textile sculptures alongside bronzes, collages, and drawings.

The title of the show, borrowed from an essay by curator and researcher Yina Jiménez, roughly translates to “living in the tempo of the sun” and relates to a conceptual framework Jiménez uses to contextualize the artist’s creative channel. Reflecting on this statement sparked Gomes to recognize a recurring circular motion in her works, both aesthetically, as in the Trouxa and Pendente series, and poetically, given the circulatory material lifespans inherent to her practice.

Working primarily with textiles as a medium, the artist chooses materials that bring with them colors, textures, trims, and indefinable sets of memories. Each fabric, article of clothing, and accessory that arrives in her studio, often rendered from fabrics found by or gifted to the artist, has traveled its path, was dressed, stored, and altered before undergoing a final transformation by Gomes’s hands. It is indeed the orbit of a new cycle granting each piece the possibility of a different existence.

Compasso do Sol (2024) is also the title of the first piece the artist produced for the exhibition. The work combines elements of drawing, collage, stitching,and binding onto a canvas with a cutout where the artist placed a handmade lace sent to her studio. Although powerful at first glance, to appreciate it properly requires one to move towards and away to discover, but not distinguish, each single creation. Its energy is harnessed from vinyl paint, acrylic marker, and a watercolor poetically inserted onto the linen surface. The work served as the guiding star to the others Gomes created for her Paris show. The artist, who traditionally has not favored naming individual pieces, felt moved to continue naming other pieces that reference the sky, including Eclipse, Alvorada [dawn], and Parélio [parelius] (all 2024), in a drawing series that evokes solar spectacles. Whilst the title to Anjo caído [Fallen angel] (2024) from the Tear [loom] series describes the mythologies ascribed to angels cast out of heaven, Gomes’s metaphysical representation reveals an intricate textile piece cast in a loom frame combining stitching, binding, various fabrics, and ropes.