Mother Tongue

Artist Statement

Imagined Futures addresses a concern universal to many immigrants: How do we grieve the life we left behind in order to live this one? What do we do with these haunting visions and questions about the lives we left behind? Reclaiming the Catholic confessional through the use of photobooth cabins, Soldi offers a nuanced space for reflection, and ultimately a mechanism for bidding farewell to his previous ideas about the future. Comprised of thirty-six seemingly identical self-portraits, Imagined Futures captures private rituals performed in analog photo booths as a form of collective mourning. The repetitive portraits mark the artist’s persistent attempt at acknowledging the grief surrounding the futures abandoned after immigrating from his homeland and the social violence enacted on queer bodies. Akin to a confessional, the booths are witness and complicit in each performance.

Entre Hermanos

Departing from the strategies used in my Imagined Futures work, I invited male-identifying queer Latinx immigrants for a collective moment of discussion and reflection. In collaboration with social worker Joel Aguirre (also a legendary Latinx drag queen named La Gordis), we facilitated a private conversation around how each perceived their future as young people in their countries of origin, and how that perception may or may not have changed over time. We continued to reflect on the role of imagination for queer Latinx people, and how we could reimagine our pasts and futures today. It was an emotional evening, with varying levels of acceptance, forgiveness and grief, as well as stories of rebirth, transformation, and resilience. Each participant was then invited into a photo booth and asked to close their eyes and hold a shutter release while I walked them through a deep meditation. At any point during this quiet, intimate time, the subject was able to make a self-portrait if they desired.

CARGAMONTÓN is a portfolio of large-scale aquatint photogravures probing masculinity, intimacy, violence, and rite found in adolescent horseplay that hovers between bullying and homoerotic self-discovery. This work mines vernacular video archives that mirror the artist’s experience in an all-boys Catholic school in Lima, Perú. The result is a series of images akin to obscure memories that depict bodies vacillating between torture and pleasure. Soldi says, “I am interested in unpacking how these rites serve as a tool for young men assert power and mask desire, as part of a larger exploration of masculinity in Latin America.”

Rafael Soldi

Artist Bio

Rafael Soldi is a Peruvian- born, Seattle-based artist and curator. He holds a BFA in Photography & Curatorial Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art. His practice centers on how queerness and masculinity intersect with larger topics of our time such as immigration, memory, and loss. He has exhibited internationally at the Frye Art Museum, American University Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, ClampArt, The Print Center, Museo MATE, Filter Space, and Burrard Arts Foundation, among others. Rafael has received grants and awards from the Magenta Foundation, Puffin Foundation, smART Ventures, Artist Trust, 4Culture, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and Center Santa Fe. He has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, Bogliasco Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and PICTURE BERLIN. His work is in the permanent collections of the Tacoma Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, King County Public Art Collection, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Rafael’s work has been reviewed on ARTFORUM, The Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, Photograph Magazine, The Seen, Art Nexus, and PDN. He is the co-founder of the Strange Fire Collective, a project dedicated to highlighting work made by women, people of color, and queer and trans artists; and co-curator of the High Wall, a yearly outdoor video projection program that invites immigrant artists and artists working on themes of diaspora and borderlands to intervene the facade of a former immigration center building in the heart of Seattle.

Visit his website: https://rafaelsoldi.com/Imagined-Futures