Manuel Solano, who is non-binary and prefers plural pronouns, was an emerging 26-year-old artist when they lost their sight to an HIV-related infection in 2013. Unwilling to be hindered by their condition and urged on by their friends, Solano returned to work. But rather than the experimental art of their earlier years, they began anew with a series of expressive portraits and word paintings, titled “Blind Transgender with AIDS”. Working almost exclusively with paint on either canvas or paper, mining their memories of pop culture and past times while applying the paint with their hands, Solano created an impressive body of work. Because Solano draws from memories, the pop stars and formidable female figures they select for commemoration are an autobiographical pantheon of the painter’s formative influences. While Solano transcends fixed gender in their personal identity, their work has the electric energy that drag generates from the friction between exaggerated gender stereotypes.