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Pão e Fio (Bread and Thread) brings together works from different stages of Sonia Navarro's artistic trajectory, whose practice draws on textile materials and traditions historically linked to domestic work, subsistence economies, and care. 

Pão e fio, which give the exhibition its title, condense two essential needs — to feed and to protect — and evoke forms of work, particularly female, that have traditionally been rendered invisible and under-recognised. Through sewing, embroidery, and the reuse of materials, Navarro reclaims this knowledge and places it at the centre of contemporary artistic practice.

 

Her work is deeply tied to a family genealogy: sewing runs through three generations of women in her environment, from her grandmothers and her mother, Teresa, to the artist herself. This transmission of knowledge also extends to collaborations with seamstresses, embroiderers, and artisans, questioning the idea of individual authorship and highlighting forms of shared production.

 

The exhibition combines materials from Mediterranean craft and rural traditions, such as jarapas, esparto, wool, linen, felt, and rubber, some of which are salvaged, reused, or linked to trades undergoing transformation or at risk of disappearing. Navarro shifts these materials from their everyday function into the sculptural realm, without erasing their memory or their functional dimension.

 

Manual making occupies a central place: cutting, assembling, embroidering, tensioning, folding, and sewing are repetitive actions that introduce a temporality based on attentiveness and persistence into the work, contrasting with the logic of industrial production.

 

Pão e fio definitively proposes a reflection on the value of that which has traditionally remained outside systems of economic and cultural recognition: knowledge passed down through generations, handiwork, repair, reuse, and the forms of care that sustain life. Navarro mentions to these gestures, highlighting material culture as fundamental to understanding our social and emotional history.

 

 

Susana González, october 2025

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