Sonia Gouveia
Winner Challenge
2023
Sonia Gouveia is an architect and urban planner based in São Paulo, Brazil. Alongside her career in architecture, she has developed a personal visual research practice in photography. After earning a master’s degree with a focus on photographic documentation of architecture, she began to explore themes of everyday life, human relationships, and urban space. Her most recent photographic series, Little Everyday Sorrows, Empty Audience, and Observation Towers, have been featured in international festivals and art galleries. Sonia Gouveia constructs a quiet yet sharp photographic language, where architecture becomes both presence and absence, geometry and metaphor. In her work, the city is not merely a backdrop but a narrative device: deserted bleachers and observation towers speak of a world that has lost its sense of community. Her aesthetic of the everyday becomes a mirror of widespread discomfort, revealed through the invisible pains of daily life. Photography, in Gouveia’s hands, becomes a contemplative space—inviting the viewer to rediscover themselves within the urban void.
Why NNC Gallery Selected Sonia Gouveia:
For her ability to capture the emotional and social tensions of urban life with a visual language that is both rigorous and poetic. Her images turn ordinary spaces into critical devices, striking a balance between form and content. Sonia Gouveia brings to contemporary photography a clear, essential, and deeply human voice.
Statement
Sonia Gouveia’s artistic path stems from a deep reflection on urban space and the human condition. After years of photographic work focused on architecture and street photography, she moved toward a more conceptual and intimate practice. In Little Everyday Sorrows, she visually narrates the small frustrations of daily life, capturing the tension between maintaining the status quo and seeking personal fulfillment. The series Empty Audience and Observation Towers examine the relationship between architecture, solitude, and urban living: the empty collective space and distant observation become metaphors for a more isolated humanity, transitioning from flâneur to voyeur.
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