We The Migrants; Fleeing/Flooding
By Soledad Salame
As I have done throughout my career, I am working on visual explorations of inter-related social-environmental issues that define our age. Most recently, I have begun to explore many techniques as engraving in glass. This is a new medium for me and it is extending my vocabulary visually and aesthetically. This new series builds on my experiences in Antarctica in very different ways, incorporating textual relief elements which highlight the results of an era of negligence of climate change concerns. I am excited to expand and push this work and my explorations of this medium forward as I explore the disappearance of the planet’s glaciers and polar ice caps. Another consequence of climate change that has sparked an interest for me is the migration of people away from the areas that are being most heavily affected by the recent upsurge in rising water and unstable weather conditions across the planet. Recent border security issues, in the US have exacerbated the social impacts of migration, challenging already environmentally unsustainable practices. In this new work I am also interested in the role of the media in creating and maintaining our current social situation. My new work goes back to the old days of reading the physical newspaper, which provided a kind of first-person involvement with a physical object. The materials once associated with this practice have been rapidly replaced, not only because of the growth of contemporary technology, but also because of the slow death of paper based print material and sand-based glass. Human labor once created an actual thing, today it creates a projected idea.
About the Artist
Soledad Salamé
Soledad Salamé, American, was born in Santiago, Chile in 1954. She currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, where she directs Sol Print Studio, an experimental space for artists to develop and refine their printmaking skills. From 1973 to 1983 Salamé lived and studied in Venezuela. During this time she was exposed to the rainforest, a pivotal experience in her artistic development. As an interdisciplinary artist, Salamé creates work that originates from extensive research of specific environmental and human rights topics. In the pursuit of new ideas, she has conducted intensive field research in the Americas, and Antarctica. Her work has been presented at multiple venues, including the Museum of the Americas and National Museum of Women in The Arts, Washington DC; Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD; Milwaukee Museum of Art, WI; Denver Museum of Art, CO; Phoenix Museum of Art, AZ; Miami Art Museum, FL; and the Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile. Salamé’s work is represented in private and public collections internationally, including The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, The Baltimore Museum of Art and the University of Essex, UK. Her work is included in The St. James Guide to Hispanic Artists, by Thomas Riggs (2002), Latin American Women Artists of the United States, by Robert Henkes (1999), and Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century, by Edward J. Sullivan (1996).