John Sonsini’s Portraits of Intimacy and Labor at Para A Mexico City

John Sonsini has spent decades returning to the same questions, even if it took time to recognize the continuity himself. His practice unfolds through repetition and sustained encounter—less an accumulation of subjects than a long inquiry into what presence looks like when it is allowed to deepen. Exhibiting at Para A, the works read as evidence of a commitment to staying with people, with process, and with the ethical weight of looking over time.

“I’ve done basically five bodies of work in my lifetime, and they’re all about the same subject,” Sonsini reflects. “I didn’t realize that until we worked on the book. It had never occurred to me that I’d been focused on the same thing for a very long time.” The realization, which surfaced while preparing “John Sonsini + David Pagel: Broad Reminders”, reframes the exhibition not as a progression of projects, but as a sustained return—an insistence on revisiting the same ethical and emotional terrain time and time again.

Portraiture as Exchange and Duration

One of the most established artists showing during Mexico City Art Week, Sonsini approaches portraiture as a form of sustained attention. His practice centers on painting undocumented Latino day laborers in California—men he compensates for their time, treating the labor of sitting (which usually lasts at least one month) as equal to the labor performed outside the studio. That exchange is central to the work, shaping not only how the portraits are made, but how they are ultimately perceived. The paintings resist narrative compression or symbolic shorthand. Instead, they insist on duration as both method and meaning.

The Muse as Method: Gabriel Barajas

Running parallel to these portraits is a deeply personal thread: Sonsini’s long-standing relationship with his partner and muse, Gabriel Barajas, whose presence has shaped the evolution of the practice over decades. Intimacy here is a method—one built through trust, repetition, and shared time. Gabriel is also on the cover of Sonsini’s book. 

“Intimacy here is a method—one built through trust, repetition, and shared time.”

“I was completely astonished when I started working with Gabriel. I painted only Gabriel for five years,” Sonsini says. “And it was Gabriel who eventually said, ‘Okay, now you have to paint other people.’” What followed was not a rupture, but an expansion. “Around 2000 or 2001, I started painting guys in the neighborhood. I never set out for it to become anything larger, but it slowly turned into this twenty-five-year-long project of painting day laborers who gathered in our area.” What began without agenda became a sustained commitment. 

Para A and the Architecture of Attention

Installed within Para A’s light-filled, domestic-scale galleries, the portraits unfold with quiet insistence. The exhibition occupies the former studio of Juan Soriano (also a gay portratist,) housed within the Luis Barragán– and Max Cetto-designed Edificio para Artistas—a modernist structure conceived as a place for living and working. The architecture reinforces the conditions Sonsini’s paintings require: proximity and attention. Under the direction of Veronica Fernández, Para A’s program honors that lineage, privileging close looking and conversation.

The show brings together recent oil paintings and watercolors from Sonsini’s long-running Day Workers series. The works resist narrative hierarchy. Some portraits echo the blunt framing of identification; others expand into small groupings that suggest relationship. Backgrounds remain pared back, redirecting attention toward posture, gesture, and emotional residue. Heavy, lyrical brushwork privileges temperament over detail, allowing the paintings to register presence. 

Alongside the oils are watercolors produced during the pandemic, when in-person sittings were no longer possible. Rather than functioning as preparatory studies, these works revisit earlier paintings, opening a secondary phase of looking that is quieter and more solitary. “It was an interesting surprise to realize that another medium allowed me to recast something that felt lost in the finished oil paintings,” Sonsini reflects. The shift reframes portraiture as almost an act of re-seeing. In fact, resting on the mantel is the cover portrait from Sonsini’s monograph: Gabriel in their green studio, now rendered in watercolor.

Reciprocity, Politics, and the Act of Looking

In the days leading up to the opening, the exhibition has already elicited strong responses: long pauses and moments of quiet recognition. That reaction feels proportional to what the work demands. Sonsini’s portraits are built on reciprocity. “A lot of people assume I must learn so much about my sitters,” he says. “And yes, of course I do. But really, the guys I’m painting are learning a lot about Gabriel and me. You learn a lot about someone by watching them work—and they’re watching me work.” The reversal is subtle but significant. “We’ve had models say they find it curious that usually the person paying them is watching how well they’re doing—but here, they’re watching me.”

“You learn a lot about someone by watching them work—and they’re watching me work.”

John Sonsini

That reciprocity also carries unmistakable political weight. Most of the men Sonsini paints are undocumented immigrants—people whose visibility is increasingly shaped by surveillance, fear, and the threat of removal. “There was a time when someone like me might have said, ‘I’m not really very political,’” Sonsini reflects. “That was a long time ago. Today, we’re not allowed to not be political. The times thrust us into that.” In an era defined by intensified border enforcement, ICE raids, and the normalization of erasure as policy, the simple act of sustained looking becomes charged. Sonsini’s response is neither rhetorical nor symbolic. Proceeds from works sold in the exhibition will be shared with the sitters.

While much of Mexico City Art Week is oriented toward mediated perception and technological critique—seen elsewhere in exhibitions such as Trevor Paglen’s “Alucinaciones” at Lago/Algo and presentations by Troika—Sonsini’s work moves deliberately in the opposite direction. It insists on a story as old as time: the artist and his muse.

Looking ahead, Sonsini has spoken of plans to open a museum in Querétaro with Gabriel Barajas—a space that would house paintings by the artist and continue conversations around portraiture and their shared histories.