Sonia Bensouda is the Onstream Gallery artist who is rightly included in the Digital Surrealism sphere. When we decided to count Sonia among the artists of our stable, one thing immediately attracted us like magnets: her naturalness in explaining complex systems and philosophies in simple words, talking about Focault, Magritte and spatial and geometrical concepts in a completely natural way.Sonia Bensouda is a citizen of the world, born in Morocco of French parents and living and working in London, in an environment where design and physical spaces dialogue with theoretical ones, opening real windows that she herself defines as "windows on the world" - of humanistic memory.
Sonia does something apparently simple, but that hides a complex system.
She inserts human figures, men and women without distinction, inside digital, geometric spaces, created ad hoc to propose her interpretation of Heterotopias, the places described by Focault in his Other Spaces. The places of Heterotopias.
But let's go in order.
Sonia has a background as an interior designer: herobsessive search for color and for the chromatic power it expresses is a passion that, as in all talented artists, has turned into anobsession.
Books of architecture, decorative patterns from past centuries, design books and real color palettes are the basis from which the artist must always start, to ensure a continuity and consistency of intent that characterizes all his work.
Once created this color palette, the artist tries to define its spaces, creating lines and defining geometries. This is where Surrealism comes in.
The Surrealism is the artistic current that more than all has tried, many times succeeding, to distort the real, to create spaces that exist in the mind of the observer, going to analyze the psyche to wake up the unconscious and the irrational.
After all, if Magritte, one of the greatest exponents of the artistic current, is one of the favorite artists of Bensouda, there will be a reason.
If Surrealism is the artistic current to which Sonia feels closest, if only for a question of emotional closeness, Michel Focault is the philosopher who has given meaning to her artistic practice.
In Spazi Altri.I luoghi delle Eterotopie, Focault formalises these places, these spaces, which are not found in reality and cannot be reduced to simple mental images.
They are something more, which Sonia likes to define in this way:
They arethose spaces in which we have all found ourselves, at least once. We are physically in a place, but with our mind we are elsewhere. Here, that elsewhere, that feeling of loss that immediately becomes mental stability, is what I want to represent in my digital collages.
Why do we talk about digital collages?
These are not photographs, except in the initial phase of the work. That Sonia is a very good photographer there is no doubt, as evidenced by the many shots that over the years she has collected during her travels.
From photographs the artist starts to put together shapes, overlap planes, create new spaces.
His digital collages are all on Giclee print - the best quality in circulation for digital printing -, further proof of how the artist loves detail from any point of view.
Not surprisingly, these are his words when he talks about works of art:
"What I love about making art is once the artwork is displayed at home, you have this other surrealist window to look at. In these strange times, it brings poetry, dream and colour to the everyday. Poetry, dreams and colours".
"What Ilove most about making art is the moment when you have the work at home, this surrealist window to look at and admire. In these times, this window to look at gives you poetry, dreams, colors every day. Poetry, dreams and colors."
Is this not an exemplary summary of everything we have said so far?
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