Artist Statement

I am an artist and an architect. My work is focused on cities and on the urban universe, an old passion, that lead me to study architecture and urbanism. Along my graduation years, I started to give form to my artistic expression, while expanding my architectural mind , but gradually, the artistic activity became more and more important, so eventually I landed in the arts for a full time experience.

As an artist, I make use of my architect vocabulary to capture the spirit of the contemporary city, this complex cultural phenomenon, and to build in various layers, images of the transforming urban space.

My work uses the re-treatment of images, mixing paintings, photographs and digital, in a process that starts with brush and paint and ends with scanning and digital collage. As a result of this experience with a diversity of techniques, I develop a constuction work, using different elements, reflecting the complex processes of construction of the city, this contemporary babel in which we are imerse.

My Urban Calligraphy series capture and redraw the urban design of cities, making a digital impression of the territories where the great challenges of the humam associated life and new cultural production will take place.

website: http://www.soniagil.com.br
email: sonia@soniagil.com.br

Artist Bio

Sonia was born in Salvador, Brazil, in 1961. She grew up in Rio de Janeiro and studied Architecture at the local School of Architecture and Urbanism (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) and began her art studies at the Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro. She attended art classes at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage and private art studios.

After graduating, she persued a career as an architect, working with urban issues. Between 1994 and 1999 she helped to coordinate The United Nation´s Local Initiatives for the Urban Environment Program in Brazil. At the turn of the century she decided to move on again to start off a Consulting firm to work with Marketing Intelligence and territory analysis, helping corporations to understand their outside business and to create new scenarios.

While working with territory analysis and coordinating a group of geographers and urbanists she developed a growing interest in the connection between maps and art. So she decided it was time to reinvent herself and become fully an artist.

In 2009, she co-founded Urban Dialogues ©, a global art network formaed by artists from different coities and cultures working in collaboration. She currently lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.