The Afro-Brazilian artist’s first institutional exhibition in the United States pairs a new outdoor work on Museum Hill with a gallery survey of tactile sculptures that reflect on resilience, memory, and reclamation.
Sonia Gomes, Ó Abre Alas, 2025. Courtesy the artist, Mendes Wood DM, and Pace Gallery. Installation view at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY. Photo by Jacob Vitale. Courtesy of Storm King Art Center.
When Afro-Brazilian artist Sonia Gomes first stood beneath the tree that would hold her new work at Storm King Art Center, she felt something stirring. “It was as if the tree was calling,” she said. “Its branches opened to receive what I wanted to give.”
Titled Ó Abre Alas (Portuguese for “Open the Wings”), the work crowns her first institutional exhibition in the United States and her first large-scale outdoor installation on American soil. Presented amid Storm King’s newly reimagined 500-acre campus, the installation and accompanying survey trace the artist’s decades-long dialogue between material, memory, and landscape.
Rooted in the land
Although Ó Abre Alas marks Gomes’s first institutional presentation in the United States, it follows earlier explorations of outdoor installation in Brazil. “I am deeply interested in the dialogue between art and nature,” she said. “I first had the chance to develop a piece for the outdoors in 2014 at Cidade Matarazzo in São Paulo. Later, in 2018, I had a show at Lina Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro in conjunction with my show at MASP.”
These experiences shaped how she approached the vastness of the Hudson Valley. “I felt the need to refine and translate my materials for this new work, exploring more vibrant yet weather-resistant colors.” The installation’s suspended forms, sewn and wrapped in her signature assemblage of fabric and wire, shimmer against the autumn sky, alive to the light, the wind, and the murmurs of visitors below.
Sonia Gomes, Ó Abre Alas (detail), 2025. Courtesy the artist, Mendes Wood DM, and Pace Gallery. Installation view at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY. Photo by Jacob Vitale. Courtesy of Storm King Art Center.
Between ancestry and invention
Across both the outdoor and indoor components, Gomes continues to explore Afro-Brazilian heritage, women’s labour, and the spiritual force embedded in cloth and gesture. “It’s often said in Brazil that Black people make craft and not art,” she reflected. “For as long as I can remember, I have recognised myself in the work I made as a form of expression; beyond labels, I consider it a form of resilience. ‘Ó Abre Alas!’ is precisely this celebration of being Afro-Brazilian and cherishing my origins.”
Inside Storm King’s galleries, a survey gathers textile sculptures and assemblages spanning decades. The curatorial approach avoids linear chronology. Instead, the works spiral through time, returning to familiar shapes and materials, knots, seams, and cords that carry memory forward. “If there was an evolution at all, it was extremely natural and occurred in the act of creation, in the artistic process itself,” she said. “However, I tend not to see this evolution, as I feel everything is connected; the work is a spiral.”
Sonia Gomes, Quando o sol nascer azul (Pano series), 2021. Installation view at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY. Photo by Jeffrey Jenkins.
Material as memory
For Ó Abre Alas, Gomes combined cloth fragments, rope, steel, and discarded textiles collected from her studio and community. She treats found material not as residue but as witness. Each component bears traces of previous lives, becoming part of a broader conversation about repair.
In the outdoor setting, those gestures meet the living architecture of a tree. The branches serve as both structure and collaborator, holding the forms as they sway. Visitors encounter an environment that breathes with motion and colour. “Stop, observe, feel,” Gomes said of the installation. “On the opening day, I noticed that ‘Ó Abre Alas!’ seemed to hypnotise the audience, perhaps because of the colors, perhaps because of the movement brought to life by the wind. It was a beautiful and moving moment, as I saw the work getting people’s hearts.”
Sonia Gomes, Untitled (Pendente series), 2023. Installation view at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY. Photo by Jeffrey Jenkins
A landscape renewed
Storm King reopened this season after completing a $53 million capital project designed around sustainability and accessibility. The expansion replaced former parking areas with meadows and pathways, added all-electric welcome pavilions, and planted more than 650 trees to strengthen local ecosystems. A new conservation and fabrication facility now enables artists to produce ambitious works directly on site.
Within this revitalised landscape, Ó Abre Alas becomes both artwork and metaphor. Its suspended forms mirror the museum’s shift toward renewal and care. Gomes’s improvisational use of salvaged fabric parallels Storm King’s efforts to regenerate land and reduce its footprint.
Sonia Gomes, Lu, 2023. Installation view at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY. Photo by Jeffrey Jenkins
The rhythm of invitation
For Gomes, sculpture is inseparable from movement and music. The title Ó Abre Alas borrows from a beloved Brazilian carnival anthem composed by Chiquinha Gonzaga in 1899, whose refrain calls for passage and freedom. “Ó abre alas que eu quero passar!” she repeats with a smile. “Oh, make way for me, I want to pass!”
The line captures the spirit of the work: insistence without aggression, presence that demands space yet remains generous. Hanging between sky and earth, the pieces catch the light like carnival banners, reminding visitors that joy can be an act of resistance.
Sonia Gomes, Untitled (“A vida não me assusta” series), 2020. Installation view at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY. Photo by Jeffrey Jenkins
A continuing conversation
Gomes’s dialogue with Storm King extends beyond this season. Her approach to collaboration, honouring the histories of materials and the vitality of nature, aligns with the institution’s renewed commitment to art in conversation with ecology. “In Brazil, I have created outdoor works before, but never in a place like this, where the landscape itself becomes part of the conversation,” she said.
For those encountering her work for the first time, she hopes the response will be felt before it is analysed. “I want people to sense the energy in the materials, the stories that live in them,” she explained. “Maybe they will recognise something of themselves.”
As the autumn light shifts over the Hudson Valley, Ó Abre Alas moves with it, each gust of wind re-composing the piece anew. In its rhythm of colour, fabric, and air, Gomes offers a simple act of permission: an opening.
“Make way,” she says again. “Let the work pass through you.”
‘Sonia Gomes: Ó Abre Alas’ will be on view until 10 November 2025 at Storm King Art Center, New York. For more information, visit stormking.org.
