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Artist Lecture: Rafael Soldi
Wednesday, September 18 , 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm CDT
Exhibiting artist Rafael Soldi will present a lecture in conjunction with his current exhibition, A moon, a peephole, an explosion, or a flashing memory.
A moon, a peephole, an explosion, or a flashing memory features photographs, a handwritten text installation, and an EKG made from 2009 through 2023. Informed by the artist’s queer, Peruvian identity, the selected works reflect on the possibilities of language, memory, and imagining. In Soldi’s words, he “probes states of in-betweenness—especially as it occurs across tongues—providing nuanced insight into immigrant identity while also offering a rich metaphor for queer experience.”
The exhibition title is excerpted from one of Soldi’s own texts, which appeared on the cover of his Imagined Futures book. In the text, the artist addresses The Sun Will Set in the Same Place, a photograph featured in this exhibition. Soldi grew up in Peru and moved to the United States as a teenager, first to the east coast and then to the west coast. When he saw the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean in Seattle, 15 years after regularly seeing the same sight as a child in Peru, he was struck by a wave of nostalgia and a desire to reconcile his feelings about his home country. He then made the black-and-white photograph of what appears to be a brilliant, radiating orb. He writes, “I liked the ambiguity of this image too… it’s like being blinded by the sun, or it could be an eclipse or a black hole or a camera shutter or a moon or an explosion or a flashing memory or a peephole.” Special Collections at Milner Library recently acquired Soldi’s Imagined Futures book, and it will be on view in the exhibition.
Imagined Futures comprises 36 tiny, black-and-white self-portraits made in photo booths. Rather than making silly faces with friends or posing for an identification photo, Soldi was repeatedly photographed alone and with his eyes closed. In his words, the project marks his “persistent attempt at acknowledging the grief surrounding the futures abandoned after immigrating from his homeland and the social violence enacted on queer bodies.” Soldi extended the project to other queer, male-identifying, Latinx immigrants for Entre Hermanos. He collaborated with social worker Joel Aguirre to facilitate a conversation about how the participants “perceived their future as young people in their countries of origin,” how that perception may have changed, and how they could “reimagine their futures and pasts today.” Following the discussion, each participant could make their own self-portrait in a photo booth while being guided through a meditation exercise. The resulting photographs are presented in color and at a significantly larger scale than Soldi’s self-portraits.
For mouth to mouth, Soldi explores fluidity between two languages, Spanish and English, one that was slipping away and one that he was learning. The installation features dozens of handwritten words presented in individual frames: poema, problema, home, body, historia, histeria, memoria. Soldi said that the errors and mistranslations “yielded a directory of invented terms, a collection of tiny unintended poems.” Meanwhile Shards—which brings together poetry, astronomy, history, and language—is titled after one of Jay Hopler’s poems. Soldi etched four glass panels with a single word each: mother, boy, soft, and tongue. The words can form a variety of combinations and evoke a range of feelings depending on the background of the viewer. Behind each word is a black-and-white photograph depicting the stars over his mother on the night Soldi was born. The artist visited the observatory in Lima, Peru, to create the images. Marcapasos, an EKG displayed as an artist’s book, demonstrates another form of language. The EKG recorded the electrical activities in Soldi’s heart when he was eleven years old. The artist writes, “I was moved by finding this ‘written record of my own heart as a child, at a time when I was aware of my queerness and my difference but had no language for it.”
This exhibition is the center point of multiple programs. Soldi is delivering a public artist lecture, which will be a part of Illinois State University’s Latinx Heritage Month events. University Galleries’ staff is leading art-making workshops for ISU students, K-12 students, and community members. Sensory-friendly times and scavenger hunts are available. Virtual and in-person curator-led tours are available by appointment. Field trip reimbursements are available for K-12 schools and community organizations.
Rafael Soldi: A moon, a peephole, an explosion, or a flashing memory is curated by Kendra Paitz, University Galleries’ director and chief curator. This exhibition and programming are supported by University Galleries’ grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Alice and Fannie Fell Trust. Workshops and field trip reimbursements are supported by the Lori Baum and Aaron Henkelman University Galleries Community Fund.
Artist biography
Rafael Soldi (b. 1987, Lima, Peru) is an artist, curator, and writer based in Seattle. His work has been exhibited at the Frye Art Museum (Seattle); Frost Art Museum (Miami); Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, Massachusetts); CLAMP (New York City); The Print Center (Philadelphia); Museo MATE (Lima); Filter Space (Chicago); and Burrard Arts Foundation (Vancouver). His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Tacoma Art Museum; Frye Art Museum; King County Public Art Collection; and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, Bogliasco Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and PICTURE BERLIN. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, The Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, Photograph Magazine, The Seen, Art Nexus, and PDN. He has completed commercial and editorial assignments for The New York Times, The Guardian, Microsoft, Seattle University, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.
Soldi is the co-founder of Strange Fire Collective, a project dedicated to highlighting work made by women, people of color, and queer and trans artists. He is also the co-curator of the High Wall, a yearly outdoor video projection program featuring immigrant artists and artists working on themes of diaspora and borderlands. Soldi received his B.F.A. in Photography and Curatorial Studies from Maryland Institute College of Art.
