Soledad Salamé
We the Migrants: Fleeing / Flooding
in collaboration with Michael Koryta
September 15 – October 26, 2019
Reception: September 18, from 6-8pm
Baltimore: Goya Contemporary Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of artworks by Baltimore-based, Chilean born Contemporary artist Soledad Salamé, whose new work reflects the experiences and insights of migration and the current global migrant and refugee crisis related to climate change, often at the hands of human-made problems, and exacerbated by its sociopolitical impact.
For more than three decades, Soledad Salamé has produced challenging artworks motivated by the fragility, beauty, and destruction of global environments and resources, even foretelling the annihilation and disappearance of precious natural assets due to human activities. Now, these resource depletions have aided in economic, environmental, social, and violent upheavals worldwide, which have contributed greatly to migration – exactly when our current government administration has disregarded human rights and claimed a war on migration for virtually any reason.
The title of the exhibition, We the Migrants: Fleeing / Flooding, takes its cue from Hannah Arendt’s illustrious 1943 essay, “We Refugees” and the [often memorized] preamble to the United States Constitution (contributed by founding father Gouverneur Morris) which reads “We the People of the United States in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Salamé’s exhibition questions just where the “Justice, Tranquility, Defense, Welfare, and Liberty” resides for those fleeing due to climate change’s contribution to unrest.
Often celebrated for fusing new media with traditional techniques to represent the parallel evolution of scientific practice and visual practice, Salamé’s most recent exhibition stands as a provocative call-to-arms and features new installations, video work, print work, glasswork, and embroidery. Together, the works explore both real and imaginary geographies, reconstructing personal and collective tales of migration while analyzing the social tolls of misrepresented evidence.
Overlaying historical experiences of global displacement with the current plight of refugees around the world, Salamé’s exhibition shows how migration as a global practice is done out of urgency and survival. And in showing us this aspect, the artist unifies humanity in this crisis. Objects in the exhibition reference newspapers and newspaper headlines with narratives driven from news covering migration, border closings, historic attacks, and climate change related disasters, as well as referencing Antarctica, the melting glaciers causing rising waters, and the emotional impact of bearing witness to these events.
From 1973 to 1983 Salamé lived in Venezuela. During this time, she was exposed to the rainforest, a pivotal experience in her artistic development that continues to be a source of inspiration. As an interdisciplinary artist, she creates work that originates from extensive research of specific topics. In the pursuit of new ideas, she has conducted intensive field research in the Americas, Antarctica, and beyond.
We the Migrants: Fleeing / Flooding, lays bare Salamé’s forceful voice in favor of saving our planet and all its inhabitants, no matter where we draw our boarders. Her pursuit for human and environmental justice has generated a remarkable body of work. A catalogue will accompany this exhibition with contributions from preeminent scholars Ksenia Nouril and Jennie Hirsh. Portions of this exhibition will travel to NAC Galería de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile in April of 2020, and Transart Foundation for Art and Anthropology, Houston, TX, in Sept. of 2020.
For more information please contact the exhibition’s curator, Amy Eva Raehse
P: 410-366-2001 or amy@goyacontemporary.com
3000 Chestnut Avenue, Mill Centre | Baltimore, MD 21211 | www.goyacontemporary.com
About Soledad Salamé
After earning a BA at Santiago College in Chile (1972), Chilean-born (Santiago, 1954), Baltimorebased artist Soledad Salamé completed her MA at the CERGA, Centro de Enseñanza Grafica, Conac in Caracas, Venezuela (1979). Salamé moved to Washington, DC in 1983 before establishing in 2009 a vibrant print studio in Baltimore where she conducts mini-residencies local with artists. Her artwork is widely represented in private and public museums and collections across the globe with noteworthy exhibitions at the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD; Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile; Katonah Museum of Art, Westchester, NY; The Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC; El Museo del Barrio, NY; Milwaukee Museum of Art, WI; Denver Museum of Art, CO; Phoenix Museum of Art, AZ; Miami Art Museum, FL; the National Museum of Women in The Arts, Washington, DC; and the Museum of Goa, India.