Simone Subal Gallery is pleased to feature Sonia Almeida’s work at Condo 2017, hosted by The Approach. The exhibition preview is on Saturday, January 14 and Sunday, January 15 (both days noon to 6pm). The show runs until February 12, 2017.
Sonia Almeida’s presentation combines a new tapestry installation along with works on paper and continues her exploration into the mechanics of communication. Almeida is interested in how non-verbal communication (body language, hand movements, voice pitch, touch, and eye contact, for example) contributes to the dynamism of interaction and helps weave spoken language with gesture. Almeida looks closely at the power-relations amongst these non-linguistic forms of information delivery and how they involve conscious and unconscious processes of encoding and decoding. In the drawings, for instance, specific elements are isolated and simplified but still seem to resist decoding. Each drawing asks something different of the viewer: whether it is to be seen, or to be touched, or to be heard.
Almeida’s Weaving Code, a woven tapestry based on the 2016 triptych cupping the hand behind the ear, plays with being the record or document to the original painting. The “aged” image of the Weaving Code distills and obfuscates the content of the piece by automatically decoding a digital image of cupping the hand behind the ear into six different color threads (black, white, yellow, red, blue and green). A Jacquard process is used to create Almeida’s tapestry. Traditionally, in the early 19th century looms were controlled by a number of punch cards laced together into a continuous sequence. Later, the cards were replaced by computer controls, which became an important development in the advancement of automated production and computer programming. Much like interpersonal conversation, Weaving Code oscillates between revealed and withheld information and stresses the communicative breakdowns that occur in the process of translation.
Sonia Almeida was born in 1978 in Lisbon, Portugal. She completed her MFA in 2006 at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and lives and works in Boston, MA. Solo exhibitions include: MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2014, Simone Subal Gallery, New York (2016, 2014, 2012); T293, Rome, Italy (2011); Chiado 8, Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal (2009); Croxhapox, Gent, Belgium (2009); Art Positions (with T293), Art Basel Miami Beach, FL (2009). Group shows include: James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition, ICA, Boston (2017), The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal (2016 and 2014), Museum Fine of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2015), Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, Paris (2015), DeCordova Biennial, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Boston, MA (2013); Plentitude, Carl Freedman Gallery, London, UK (2012); a project by Lucie Fontaine, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY; Modern Talking, Muzeul National de Arta Cluj-Napoca, Romania (2012); Painting Overall, Prague Biennale 5, Prague, Czech Republic (2011); Four Rooms, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, Poland (2011); Personal Freedom, Portugal Arte 10, Lisbon (2010); Acts Are For Actors, Southfirst Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (2010); EDP Novos Artistas, Lisbon, Portugal (2009); The Elementary Particles (Paperback Edition), Standard (OSLO), Norway (2006).