This is part of our special feature, Imagining, Thinking, and Teaching Europe.
Born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1982, Sol Calero has lived in Europe since her late teens. Inspired by her birthplace, her work explores themes of representation, displacement, and marginalization, all informed by her own perspective as a migrant. She often refers to the experience of living between two cultures and her resulting mixed identity.
In recent years, she has developed a body of all-immersive installations that bring her pictorial exploration to a spatial and contextual level. With painting at the core of her practice, her investigation looks back to non-canonical, traditional and popular art forms excluded from western art history. In looking at how Latin American cultures are perceived and exported, her work faces the spectator with the processes of exoticism inherent to the imagery and narratives of the cultural other. Under a festive and luminous appear- ance, Calero questions the production of standards and clichéd iconography with a singu- lar and consistent presentation of abstracted tropicalism. In the form of paintings or ob- jects, her patterns, floral and fruit shapes are mixed with elements of vernacular architec- ture, claiming self-construction as a medium of social action. The mosaics, corrugated plastics, latticework and the use of color that appears in her work allude to the abilities of individuals and communities to adapt; to create an aesthetic of survival while performing their idiosyncrasy.
Sol Calero (b. 1982 Caracas, Venezuela) lives and works in Berlin. She studied fine arts at the Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife and design at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid. In 2017 she was nominated for the Preis der Nationalgalerie, and won the Audience Award. Recent exhibitions include: Villa Arson, Nice, 2020; MO.CO, Montpellier, 2020; Extra City, Antwerp, 2019; TATE, Liverpool, 2019; ChertLüdde, Berlin, 2019; Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2019; Museum van Boijmans Beunigen, Rotterdam, 2018; Brücke Museum, Berlin, 2018; Galerie Crèvecoeur, Paris, 2018; Düssel- dorf Kunstverein, 2018; Barbara Gross Gallery, Munich, 2018; Kunsthalle Lisbon, Lisbon, 2018; Folkestone Triennial, 2017.
Published on June 3, 2020.
