Sofia Borges

Sofia Borges's Surrealist-inspired works force us to acknowledge the artifice behind photography and image production in general. Before Plato's Cave (2014), for instance, shown in MoMa's 2018 The New Photography, plays with reflection and the limits of the frame, with Borges's hand drifting, almost unnoticed, into the right side of the image. Yellow Chalk (2017) and Theatre, or Cave (2014) are both high-res extreme close-ups of the faces on Greek statues, pointing us, perhaps, to the artifice behind our fantasies about Ancient Greece, which continues to influence our conceptions of freedom, democracy, and tragedy.


Sofia Borges is a visual artist who received her BA in Visual Arts from the Universidade de São Paulo in 2008. Borges has had multiple solo shows in Brazil, and has exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions in Vienna and Amsterdam. In 2016, she won the British First Book Award with her project The Swamp, inspired by her exploration of the prehistoric caves in the South of France; the book was launched together with a solo show at PhotoLondon. In 2018 Borges is presented her work at Being: The New Photography exhibition at MoMA and is engaged as a curator at the 33rd São Paulo Biennial.

SHOWS