Art Basel’s Meet the artists series presents contemporary creatives shaping today’s cultural landscape

Born and raised in Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil, Sonia Gomes’s artistic practice carries the region’s colors, textures, and experiences into objects that resist easy categorization. ‘There’s no way to separate what we’ve lived – at least not in my work – from what I do,’ she says.

Filmed in her studio, the Brazilian artist reflects on a career that began intuitively, with the simple act of taking apart her own clothes. Her work insists on gesture, care, and transformation. ‘Whether it’s craft or not, this is what I know how to do,’ she says. ‘And it’s what I’ll keep doing.’

The film moves through the materials that fill Gomes’s studio – fabrics, papers, objects, and fragments – sent to her from around the world. Memories are everywhere: of her grandmother, a traditional healer and midwife; of the house where she lived; and of the personal histories that continue to shape her forms. For Gomes, making is not separate from life: ‘My work feels deeply existential,’ she says. ‘I need it.’

Sonia Gomes is represented by Mendes Wood DM (São Paulo, Brussels, Paris, New York) and Pace Gallery (New York, Berlin, Geneva, London, Los Angeles, Seoul, Tokyo).

Sonia Gomes’s exhibition ‘Cœur sauvage’ will take place at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, from October 21, 2026, to February 14, 2027.