Simone Subal Gallery at The Approach, London, UK

January 14 – February 12, 2017

Sonia Almeida’s presentation at Condo 2017 combines a new tapestry installation along with works on paper and continues her exploration into the mechanics of communication. Almeida is interested in how non-verbal communication (body language, hand movements, voice pitch, touch, and eye contact, for example) contributes to the dynamism of interaction and helps weave spoken language with gesture. Almeida looks closely at the power- relations amongst these non-linguistic forms of information delivery and how they involve conscious and unconscious processes of encoding and decoding. In the drawings, for instance, specific elements are isolated and simplified but still seem to resist decoding. Each drawing asks something different of the viewer: whether it is to be seen, or to be touched, or to be heard.

Almeida’s Weaving Code, a woven tapestry based on the 2016 triptych cupping the hand behind the ear, plays with being the record or document to the original painting. The “aged” image of the Weaving Code distills and obfuscates the content of the piece by automatically decoding a digital image of cupping the hand behind the ear into six different color threads (black, white, yellow, red, blue and green). A Jacquard process is used to create Almeida’s tapestry. Traditionally, in the early 19th century looms were controlled by a number of punch cards laced together into a continuous sequence. Later, the cards were replaced by computer controls, which became an important development in the advancement of automated production and computer programming. Much like interpersonal conversation, Weaving Code oscillates between revealed and withheld information and stresses the communicative breakdowns that occur in the process of translation.

CONDO 2017 is a collaborative exhibition by 36 international galleries across 15 London spaces.