Artist talk by Manuela Solano
Moderated by Samuel Perea-Díaz

Since 2024, Manuela Solano has been producing a series of paintings on paper titled Blind, Transgender and Wild. She began this work as an attempt to produce paintings that were more playful and immediate. This approach has resulted in a series of paintings that reference the artist’s day-to-day experiences in Berlin nightlife, the art world, and her interactions with men using humorous touches throughout. With these works, Solano communicates what it’s like to socially navigate overlapping states of exception while still trying to have a good time. In the exhibition Viral Intimacies, the painting Wanna Party? (2024), part of the series Blind, Transgender and Wild, is presented.

“Sometimes I am sitting at a bar or waiting in line for the toilets and a stranger will ask me if I’m really blind, as though they find it hard to believe that a blind person could really be out partying on her own. They ask me why I have scars all over my body. They ask if I have a dick or a pussy. Or they ask me if I’m blind from birth or if I became blind, which leads to them to ask how I became blind, as though such an obviously tragic event was an acceptable topic for small talk. And it’s not that I want to hide my past—but I don’t want to talk about serious things when I’m trying to have fun, much less have to engage in a conversation about my HIV status with people who, more often than not, don’t even know what it means for one’s viral load to be undetectable. And because it baffles me that complete strangers don’t see anything inappropriate in trying to make me put such intimate matters on display to satisfy their curiosity.” ─ Manuela Solano

Manuela Solano (b. 1987 in Mexico City, MX) graduated in 2012 from the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking in Mexico City, after an academic stay at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. In 2014, she lost her sight due to complications from an HIV-related infection. Her practice explores identity, memory and humor. The artist’s work has been shown in numerous institutional exhibitions worldwide. Her main solo shows have taken place at Dundee Contemporary Arts (2022), Pivô, São Paulo (2021), Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2021), the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2018) and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2016). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Henie Onstad Art Center (2022), Palais de Tokyo (2019), New Museum (2018) and Museo Universitario del Chopo (2014). Her work has recently entered the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Manuela lives and works in Berlin.

This event is a collaboration with a Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin seminar „Artistic Responses to HIV/AIDS“ by Samuel Perea-Díaz, supported by HU Berlin Perspectives and the Office for Knowledge Exchange with Society. This activity is part of the “Proyecto I+D (PID2024-155474NB-I00) Affective Processes in Collective Artistic Practices: Between Agency and Experiential Knowledge (MICIU)”.