Tomie Ohtake Institute presents “Sonia Gomes – Baroque, even”

Exhibition arrives in São Paulo after touring Ouro Preto and Salvador, exploring dialogue between Brazilian baroque and contemporary art.

The Tomie Ohtake Institute opens on November 14 the exhibition “Sonia Gomes – Baroque, even”, highlighting the connection between the work of Brazilian artist Sonia Gomes (Caetanópolis, MG, 1948) and the country’s baroque tradition. The project recognizes both the artistic richness and the scars left by the structural violence of Brazil’s colonial and slaveholding history.

Curated by Paulo Miyada, artistic director of the Tomie Ohtake Institute, the show arrives in São Paulo after traveling through Ouro Preto (Museu da Inconfidência) and Salvador (MAC-BA), both key cities in the history of Brazilian baroque. In these locations, Gomes engaged with layers of memory and history that inform her creative process.

The baroque reimagined

The São Paulo edition features around 80 works that reaffirm Sonia Gomes’s unique artistic trajectory and her international relevance. Through combinations of fabrics, threads, ropes, wires, and everyday materials, she redefines traditional craft techniques, building bridges between body, territory, ancestry, and invention.

The exhibition reflects on the baroque as an expression of the artistry of African and Afro-Brazilian people, showing how Gomes transforms this heritage within a contemporary context. Accompanied by Miyada, the artist explored historical cities to deepen her research on the communities and environments that shaped this aesthetic legacy.

In São Paulo, the exhibition design becomes an integral part of the experience, translating the artist’s and curator’s research into spatial form. According to Miyada, “transparencies and openings created by Sonia Gomes produce leaps in the curved linearity of space, while the reddish tone of the walls and lighting highlight the nuances of color and shape in her work.”

Creative process revealed

The exhibition also features a section dedicated to studio materials—fabrics, objects, and elements that inspire Gomes’s practice—shown publicly for the first time. These items offer visitors insight into the intimate and experimental dimensions of her creative process.

According to Miyada, by embracing the legacy of the Brazilian baroque, Sonia Gomes “challenges us to think of the baroque as more than a European style transplanted elsewhere. Her art reclaims beauty to haunt the world and dismantle authoritarian myths of purity and progress.”

Service

Exhibition: Sonia Gomes – Baroque, even
Preview: November 13, 2025, 7 PM
Dates: November 14, 2025 – February 8, 2026
Venue: Tomie Ohtake Institute – Av. Faria Lima, 201 (Entrance via Rua Coropé, 88) – Pinheiros, São Paulo
Phone: +55 (11) 2245-1900
Website: institutotomieohtake.org.br
Instagram: @institutotomieohtake

The project is organized by the Ministry of Culture, Bradesco, and the Tomie Ohtake Institute, with sponsorship from Bradesco (Apresenta seal) and Motiva (Platina seal), through the Federal Law for Cultural Incentive. It also has the support of ProAC and the São Paulo State Secretariat of Culture, Economy and Creative Industry.