ABSTRACT
The mixed media fiber art by Brazilian artist Sonia Gomes and that by US artist Shinique Smith appear ripe for psychoanalysis: the bizarre, lumpy cloth sculptures pilfer already loaded fashion symbols. Art critics tend to start their discussions of Gomes's work with an investigation of her "background," a loosely organized term that elides family history with national, racial, and ethnic significance. The role of political identity, since it relies on a symbolic regime, poses a threat to the unsignifying awareness of affect, of the feminist subjectivities of becoming. The chapter outlines the ways that identity politics have influenced the critical writing about Sonia Gomes and Shinique Smith. It shows that critics tend to approach identity from a molar perspective that suppresses difference in favor of conformity. It is clear that cultures and the specific identities that they engender form a primary source for Gomes’s sculptural practice, in which she fashions loops of fabric and materials into abstract.
