Sonia Payes

Transmutations 2022

Sonia Payes
Transmutations 2022
On view until 29 May 2022
"Assembly Point", 152 Sturt Street, Southbank, Victoria.

Humanity is no longer the same but in a state of metamorphosis, an evolution. Themes of the cycle of life and humanity's ambivalent relationship to our future environment fuse together in Payes’s recent works.

Payes transforms her daughter's facial likeness into 'a digital avatar' representing humanity as we undertake the process of reintegration and re-engagement with our planet. Payes’s images speak eloquently of our plight while offering hope for a re-imagined future.

Photography has been the bedrock of Payes’s practice since her debut show in 2003, in which she gracefully visualised the mutable relationship between the human body and its environment. Payes eagerly adopts different media – animated film, 3D imagery, lenticular prints and sculpture – to further elucidate the concerns underpinning her art: those of perpetual change, the reciprocity between all living beings, nature’s regenerative cycles, and a faith in humanity’s ability to adapt to environmental upheaval.