Manuel Solano

Los Abuelos

Since Manuel Solano became blind, they developed a technique that relies on audio descriptions that allow for an assistant to place pins and threads on a grid that guides the artist’s hands through the surface. In Los Abuelos, the artist works with a canvas the size of their body, allowing intense interaction with the wet paint. This kind of tactility creates a complex entanglement of color masses alternating sharp and blurred details, giving the image an erratic and affective atmosphere just as our fond memories often appear to us. The painting takes us back to Solano’s early childhood in Mexico, in the late 80s. This compelling domestic scene also reveals the country’s unequal and patriarchal social structure, which is nevertheless projected on that little boy. Nowadays, according to the artist, their memory is archival and visual, being their sole source of imagery: “even to this day I can walk into a room and remember what it looked like, or I can listen to a movie, and remember what it looked like. I remember so many details from so many things I saw and they’re going to be with me for the rest of my life. It’s a blessing and a curse at the same time”. Through their striking visuality, Solano reminds us that what constitutes us is a combination of our interactions with the images we come across and to which we are subject to. By delving into this highly personal repertoire, we can analyze and deprogram involuntarily inherited social structures and power relations; the binary gender division itself.