Sofía Bonilla Otoya (Cali, 1993) is a Colombian artist living and working between Paris, France and Cali, Colombia. After studying philosophy at the Sorbonne (Paris IV) she recently completed a Masters degree at the School of Fine Arts (ENSBA Paris) where she was part of the studios of Julien Creuzet and Abraham Cruzvillegas.
Sofía’s interests focus on how different materials, colors, techniques, and forms contain specific genealogies that inform our sense of place. Her sculptures, painted fabrics, and video works, are expressions of a specific type of observation, both sincere and referenced : flower is just a flower, and yet it can also be geography, time, economies, and product of historical agreements. Her work has been exhibited at the Magasin CNAC in Grenoble, Salón Acme art fair and Campeche Gallery in CDMX and the Théatre des Expositions in Paris.
" (...) Long, light silks hang suspended, dancing beside other animated bodies. Stained by the dried juices of eucalyptus and hibiscus flowers, they are delicately held at varying heights by spiral glass structures that shape their multiple physiques. Stretched across frames—both intimate and expansive—the fabrics take on floral motifs found throughout Paris and its outskirts, the city Bonilla has called home for some time. This forms a private cartography: mausoleum doors, fin-de-siècle ironwork, and tram seat patterns, whose lines serve as guides for the minimal traces of botanical forms stripped of their volume. Small canvases punctuate a rhythm on the wall like loose words—floral studies rendered through different techniques, some drawn, others found. The larger frames come together as sentences, weaving printed botanical representations along pigmented fibers into compositions that act as backgrounds of potential relationships. (...)
Exhibition text by Fabiola Talavera