Jaosokor

Jaosokor features a canoe-shaped iron armature covered with strips of transparent, colorless plastic knotted at regular intervals. Animated by the ambient light of the gallery, the surface of the sculpture subtly evokes the properties of water, an element Solano has alluded to elsewhere in her work. Although it is made from industrial materials, this structure suggests a tribal handicraft, an association strengthened by the accompanying photograph, hung on a nearby wall, of the face of a South Sea Islander. Solano was inspired to produce this work by a sojourn in Irian Jaya, the western, Indonesian part of the island of New Guinea, where she spent time in the small village of Jaosokor. With its juxtaposition of indigenous forms and motifs with synthetic, Western materials, Jaosokor stages a confrontation between two worlds. According to the curator Teresa Blanch, who has written extensively on Solano, the piece "evokes a disturbing voyage through the ages of humanity," offering both a "denouncement of abuses perpetrated against indigenous peoples" and, at the same time, a more universalizing "tribute to human perseverance in face of the large existential fractures wrought by history."