Sonia Falcone is a contemporary Bolivian Latin American Artist. Born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on March 27th, 1965, she moved to the United States of America at a very early age, where she started to paint. As a girl she wanted to become a Dentist, but studied to become a nurse instead. Eventually, Sonia chose the path of the arts. Miss Bolivia International 1988, Sonia married Pierre Falcone and is the mother of three children: Perrine, Eugenie and Pierre Philippe.
From 1992 to 2004, Falcone was CEO and founder of Essanté Corporation, a multinational healthcare company created specifically for people looking for a better health and greater opportunities in life.
Sonia is a social activist in the area of health education, as well as in promoting the rights of children and women from broken homes that have suffered domestic violence. She was invited to volunteer for the Scottsdale Museum Center for the Arts in Arizona and as a member of the Board promoted the involvement of marginalized Latino communities with art related projects and promoted community projects for the advancement of the arts: refurbishing and maintenance of the City´s Opera, Theater and Museum. As President and founder of United Latin Organization she helped improve the living standards of marginalized Latino communities by promoting and implementing health, education and domestic violence projects.
At the turn of the third millennium, after receiving an honorary PhD in “Spirituality and Psychology” from Trinity College, she integrated her social work with her artistic endeavors, though the concept that art is a vehicle for understanding the hardships of people and a way to ponder about current predicaments using a greater imagination.
The central element in her first installation “Windows to the Soul” is a spiritual ideal, which can be found an all structures, cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, but that fulfills its ultimate expression in the human form. This expression is reflected by Falcone in monumental multicolored pieces, where the rainbow, the light of the Andean peaks and shadows that banish the break of dawn are all present, constructing a world where the fish and the llama coexist, living the art of war, waiting for the rise of the sun of justice and for the drops of blood to transform themselves into art and poetry.
“Passions of the Soul”, another of her transcendental works, treats the complementary nature of art and play, in an attempt to reach inner child that dwells inside each one of us, through the creation of metaphors that express a philosophy of life.
In “Color Field”, her worldwide acclaimed work, Falcone synthesizes the essence of popular markets from all over the world that she visited during a span of many years. The colors and aromas of these ancestral places – the pigments, condiments and particularly the spices – are all incorporated in a piece that conjures the diversity of cultures from far away nations. Spices from all over the world coexist in the space created by “Color Field”, a space shared by native spices, in order to create a symbiosis of identities whose mutual benefit and historical transcendence goes back in time.
Just like the spices that constitute the piece, “Color Field” is also in permanent movement. Whilst the concept remains the same and the form of its presentation basically prevails, “Color Field” is not a static or definitive work. Every time it migrates to another space and incorporates new local pigments of spices, it enriches itself with more colors and smells.
After a long journey in search of her roots and a better understanding of a mystical and ancestral territory, Falcone carried out a survey of the different languages indigenous to her native home in Bolivia. The survey was carried out through a historical, geographic, etymological and existential excursion of the native languages of Bolivia, a journey that took her to their possible birthplace in the valleys, jungles and mysterious ruins of Tiahuanaco, a civilization that could be more than 12,000 years old.
In 2014 Falcone was invited to participate in the exhibit of indigenous languages at the sound installation “Humboldt´s Parrot” in the Biennale of Montevideo, with the participation of Goethe Institute and the curatorship of Alfons Hug. The exhibit not only rescues the precious linguistic heritage, but also a way to see and interpret existence, a genuine vision of the human and natural world; a different reading of the universe. For the exhibit, Falcone chose the Aymara language which, due to its grammatical structure and syntax, has been used as an algebra code used as an interphase in a multilingual translation system.
Falcone´s study is a call to preserve the Amerindian languages and celebrate a worldview that lives and understands the world in a drastically different way than Western culture. In particular, Falcone manifests a social sensitivity towards a population that is marginalized in Bolivia precisely for having as a Mother tongue an indigenous language. This marginalization is leading towards a gradual but inexorable extinction of a Bolivian cultural heritage. In this regards, Falcone contributes to the impetus to deeply engage the cosmos of the Amerindian languages and the struggle to safeguard them. The affinity of Sonia Falcone with the indigenous linguistic heritage is portrayed in her work.
Falcone has exhibited in London, New York, Boston, Miami, Washington, Dublin, Moscow, Venice, Monaco, Phoenix, Monterrey, La Paz, Santa Cruz, Bogota, Cabo San Lucas, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Beijing. The Museum of Phoenix and The National Hispanic Woman Corporation invited Falcone to exhibit her work at the Phoenix City Government Convention Center. Her most recent installation “Color Field” was presented in the Dublin Biennale, Pinta London, First Edition of Biennale “Big Sur” in Montevideo, the Art Biennale in Venice, the International Art Fair ArtBo in Bogotá, Moscow World Fine Art Fair, the Magdalena Gabriel Fine Art Gallery in Monaco, the Museum of Contemporary Art Novosibirsk (Russia), Casa Cor in Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Mass Art, Boston, Aluna Art, Church-Museum “Nuestra Señora de la Merced”, and Pinta Miami, “Salar Gallery”, Miami. In 2014, Falcone was selected as the main artist to exhibit at the G77+ China United Nations Summit in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where she was invited by the Bolivian government to present her work in front of Presidents and dignitaries from 77 different nations.