Sonia Andrade

Sonia Andrade (born 1935) is a Brazilian feminist and visual artist. She was born in 1935 in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil She was one of the pioneers in video art in Brazil. Her video works use appropriation, humor, and political commentary to break down accepted visual codes.

Early work During the 1970s, Andrade was a part of a circle of young artists which included Fernando Cocchiarale, Anna Bella Geiger, Ivens Machado and Leticia Parente that began to respond to the severe period of censorship under the military dictatorship in Brazil through intense productions of individual expression through a simple, direct body language. Overt and accusatory actions were revealed without technical or formal intentions to the tight frame of the camera.

Many of Andrade's early videos feature her performing awkward and painful actions to invoke thought about torture practices employed by the Brazilian government during the dictatorship. For example, Primeira Seria, a 'first series' of videos shot by Andrade in Rio and São Paulo featured television images of Andrade winding a nylon thread around her face until it is disfigured, attacking her body hair with a scissors, driving nails between her fingers, trying to move about with her limbs and head enclosed in bird cages. This series is said to be a critique of television as a tool of conditioning, an echo of the political regime's authority.

Works

Andrade's body of work includes drawings, photography, objects, installation and multi-channel video to achieve what she calls "the most important aspect of art-the relationship between the spectator and the object." Later work consisted of assemblages of found objects, as well as drawings, photographs, sculptures, neon art and installations. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, New York Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris