Sónia Almeida: Stages
At the Clark Art Institute
By: Clark - Feb 03, 2026
The Clark Art Institute continues its art in public spaces program in 2026 with a year-long installation presenting the work of artist Sónia Almeida (b. 1978, Lisbon; lives and works in Boston). Sónia Almeida: Stages is a free exhibition on view in the Clark Center’s lower level and in the reading room of the Manton Research Center from February 14, 2026 through January 24, 2027.
“We are thrilled to share Sónia Almeida’s work with our visitors. Almeida’s ability to weave together analog and digital systems—art, technology, and the body—creates an experience that invites close looking, movement, and reflection,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark.
“Sónia Almeida’s new commissions for the Clark combine painting, printmaking, fabric arts, and artist’s books to rethink how we understand interfaces” said Robert Wiesenberger, curator of contemporary projects. “Both human-computer interfaces, and the interface between viewer and artwork, are fascinations for the artist.”
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Inspired by patterns, image reproduction technologies, and instructional materials, Almeida presents three site-responsive installations at the Clark. The subtitle, “Stages,” reflects the artist’s interest in the theatricality of art objects and the choreography they imply for viewers. It also suggests process, and the steps and layers in her mixed media work, which often adopts the visual language of diagrams or instructional materials.
On view in the Clark Center’s lower level, Stages (Tracks, Cables, Vectors, Anchors) (2025) depicts different analog and digital infrastructures that connect people or things, from train tracks to rock climbing anchors. By linking them horizontally, the artist intends each to function like a note in a musical score. Almeida’s work studies the circulation of images and the status of painting in a post-digital age.
Two of the panels in Systems (2025), also on view in the Clark Center’s lower level, show a software interface used to produce jacquard weavings while the other two include diagrams of the sympathetic nervous system. Almeida is interested in both as systems of automation and the glitches that might arise. The wood blocks displayed as part of this work were used to print an artist’s book on view in the Manton Research Center reading room.
Almeida’s interest in analog and digital media and manual and industrial production is evident in the four, double-sided banners of On the Other Side (2023). They were first produced for Fabric Arts Festival, an annual event in Fall River, Massachusetts that celebrates the city’s history of textile production and its Portuguese-American community.
This year-long installation, free and open to the public, is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Robert Wiesenberger, curator of contemporary projects.
Generous support for Sónia Almeida: Stages is provided by Margaret and Richard Kronenberg.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sónia Almeida is professor of fine arts at Brandeis University. She is a recipient of the 2015 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the 2017 James and Audrey Foster Prize, and the 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, and Culturegest, Lisbon.
RELATED EVENTS
Opening Lecture
Saturday, March 14, 11 am
Manton Research Center auditorium
Join artist Sónia Almeida for a conversation about her current exhibition in public spaces at the Clark, Sónia Almeida: Stages. Almeida will be in conversation with exhibition curator Robert Wiesenberger.
Free. For accessibility questions, call 413 458 0524.