Sonia Almeida
27 May - 15 Jul 2011
SONIA ALMEIDA
The Reader
27 May – 15 July, 2011
For her first solo presentation at T293’s space in Rome, Sonia Almeida has created a series of brand new works made out of several layers from soft materials mixed with cut-outs papery elements completed with paintings interventions; the result is a intense sequence of large format tapestries-like paintings.
The project involves the idea of taking annotations off a primary text - guided by the relation between the word and the image - and how words can trigger images into the mind, where the annotations then result in becoming the main text itself. A text can create some associations that can then develop into images, stories and situations that might differ from the original source text; each reader is a different text, each reading is a shift. ‘The Reader’ wants to draw the attention to the double meaning of the word “reader”: the reader as the subject that is reading - the viewer - and the reader as a textbook compilation of materials, an anthology. The attempt to work around this idea visually acknowledges the analogy with the painting processes employed in the exhibition’s pieces: each painting - or “page” - transfers information to the next one and, often, some elements previously intended to be used in a painting would then almost deliberately reappear into another one. Each page is therefore the experiment or the outcome deriving from the documentation’s problems and from the artworks’ presentation. The “pages” are also referring to a popular presentation format known in the 80’s, when people used to collect ‘fascicles’, sections of books published separately each month by - usually - a newspaper then bounded together into a complete book.
Sonia Almeida. 1978 born in Lisbon, Portugal. Lives and works in Boston.
The Reader
27 May – 15 July, 2011
For her first solo presentation at T293’s space in Rome, Sonia Almeida has created a series of brand new works made out of several layers from soft materials mixed with cut-outs papery elements completed with paintings interventions; the result is a intense sequence of large format tapestries-like paintings.
The project involves the idea of taking annotations off a primary text - guided by the relation between the word and the image - and how words can trigger images into the mind, where the annotations then result in becoming the main text itself. A text can create some associations that can then develop into images, stories and situations that might differ from the original source text; each reader is a different text, each reading is a shift. ‘The Reader’ wants to draw the attention to the double meaning of the word “reader”: the reader as the subject that is reading - the viewer - and the reader as a textbook compilation of materials, an anthology. The attempt to work around this idea visually acknowledges the analogy with the painting processes employed in the exhibition’s pieces: each painting - or “page” - transfers information to the next one and, often, some elements previously intended to be used in a painting would then almost deliberately reappear into another one. Each page is therefore the experiment or the outcome deriving from the documentation’s problems and from the artworks’ presentation. The “pages” are also referring to a popular presentation format known in the 80’s, when people used to collect ‘fascicles’, sections of books published separately each month by - usually - a newspaper then bounded together into a complete book.
Sonia Almeida. 1978 born in Lisbon, Portugal. Lives and works in Boston.