Solange Pessoa creates installations, drawings, paintings, and sculptures that position the viewer in a space of sublime sensorial experience. Influenced by the experiments of other Brazilian artists such as Lygia Clark, Tarsila do Amaral, and Maria Martins, Pessoa adopts a visceral and fantastical relationship with her local landscape in south-eastern Brazil and the conceptual connections between the body and nature. Since the 1980s, Pessoa has been incorporating organic materials into her enigmatic and fantastical work, creating primordial and ritualistic forms that beat with both life and are muted by the spectre of death. The bold black-and-white drawings that encompass Pessoa’s Sonhíferas series (2020– 2021) depict sinuous creatures and insects in the act of metamorphosis. Pessoa’s series of carved soapstone sculptures (pedra-sabão) demonstrate the pliability of materials as metaphoric resources, connoting histories of both process and fabrication, nature and culture. Presented in a densely packed installation of almost fifty sculptures, the works in Nihil Novi Sub Sole (2019–2021) appear in botanical groups organised so that they create pathways for visitors. Their tactile, sensuous nature creates an environment of subtle mystery – a viewing experience of both feeling and perception.
Madeline Weisburg
