Sofía Mendiondo
Diagnosis by Dreams

Sofía Mendiondo (Argentina) is a visual artist and clinical psychologist, also trained in the field of textile art in private workshops and in the Clothing Design career at FADU–UBA. The lines of interest on which her artistic practice is based are psychopathological diagnoses, dreams as archives and the actions of the body in the exercise of different trades, all of them guided by the concept of repetition. She makes use of different tools and procedures that allow her to deal with such issues: machine stitching as drawing, video, and the interactive interface. During her micro-Residency at ´ace, Sofía worked drawing freely with a sewing machine on the paper used for electrocardiograms, keeping the visual language within the field of clinics and health.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT
The world of ideas catches me so much that it leads me to insomnia. This has been with me since I was a child. I seek to have things under control but the failures are constant. The cure has the same form: file, order, repeat. I like to do consistently. I go from silence to screaming. In dreams the most important things happened to me.

My artistic practice is fed by questions that arise from the development of the two trades that make up my formative journey: psychoanalysis and sewing, which lead to concepts such as the principle of repetition, variation, measure, series, point and cut. My current line of research works on the intersection of two specific interests: psychopathological diagnoses and dreams as archives. To translate these interests, I draw with the sewing machine on tracing paper, which I choose for its rigidity and transparency, characteristics that allow me to observe the imperfect stitch, the knot and the wound thread, states that motivate me to continue pressing the pedal. I am interested in the procedures involved in the operation of the machine: the movements that the needle makes in each stitch, the hole, the sound, the speed, the synchronicity and the repetition. I record these actions through video. I also make use of this medium to create pieces involved in the repetition of actions in the exercise of other occupations, which also involve cutting and sewing—as is the task of the surgeon.