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    Memory and Novelty Converge for Manuela Solano, Who Adopted a New Process After Losing Her Sight

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    “I’ve heard that memories change every time we revisit them,” she says. “This means everybody faces the problem of remembering.”
    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Memory and Novelty Converge for Manuela Solano, Who Adopted a New Process After Losing Her Sight appeared first on Colossal. More

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      in Art

      Memory and Novelty Converge for Manuela Solano, Who Adopted a New Process After Losing Her Sight

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      “Orlando” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 215 x 215 centimeters. All images courtesy of Manuela Solano, shared with permission

      Memory and Novelty Converge for Manuela Solano, Who Adopted a New Process After Losing Her Sight

      November 19, 2025

      Art

      Grace Ebert

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      When Manuela Solano delineates a cheekbone or shapes the chiseled torso of a cowboy standing tall, precisely placed nails, tape, and pipe cleaners offer guidance. The artist, who is blind, works intuitively, feeling out the areas she and her team have marked and trusting that together, the desired imagery will emerge. “I try to force myself to keep [the shapes] faster and looser, which feels great,” she adds. “It makes the process more playful.”

      At just 26, medical malpractice in her HIV treatments caused Solano to lose her sight. She’s since adapted to new ways of working, as she taps into both her memory and imagination to produce paintings that reflect her concerns and joys. “My work is always, on some level, about myself. I make work about either my taste, my yearnings, or something I see of myself in someone else,” she says.

      A beautiful film by Barbara Anastacio for T Magazine—which was made in 2018 before the artist’s gender transition—visits Solano’s then-studio in Mexico City and glimpses her process in detail. We see the artist flip through work made before she lost her sight in 2014 as she traces her practice from art school to the present.

      Snowy scenes and portraits appear throughout the sketchbook and offer a visual throughline to her work today. Recent paintings like “Walking on Water” retain the vast landscapes of her earlier pieces as ripples pulse across the sea’s surface. “Me and my team are constantly figuring out the best way to paint textures or effects we haven’t painted before. In that way, we are continually learning,” she adds.

      Similarly, a collection of self-portraits presented in her solo show Egogénsis, held earlier this year in Madrid, reflects a complex evolution of identity through a variety of tender portraits. Gender is fluid in this body of work, and the connection between humans and nature is intrinsic, as parts of the environment seem to imprint themselves onto her figures.

      While Solano does pull from memory, she’s quick to clarify that this process isn’t unique to her practice. “I’ve heard that memories change every time we revisit them,” she says. “This means everybody faces the problem of remembering things a different way than they actually look.”

      “Dinosaurio” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 215 x 215 centimeters

      Having recently relocated to Berlin, Solano incorporates parts of her daily life into much of her practice, allowing her ongoing experiences and dreams to mix with imagery from the past and produce new compositions. She explains:

      Nowadays, I am making a lot of work about my current comings and goings, all of it things I obviously have never seen. I think there is a common misinterpretation that my work is perhaps about memory, that I am painting the things I saw. And this often comes with the rather ableist worry that someday I might run out of memories to paint. But this is not the case at all. I am originating new images and putting them in my work all the time.

      Solano is also a writer and often pens poems and stories to accompany her paintings. A recent piece, which she refers to as a manifesto, will accompany her new Blind Transgender and Wild series. If you’re in Mexico City, you can see the artist’s pop-culture works through January 4 at Museo Tamayo, before the exhibition travels to CAAC Sevilla in 2026. Find more of her work on Instagram.

      “Cowboy” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 215 x 215 centimeters

      “The Childlike Empress” in process

      “The Childlike Empress” (2024)

      “Walking on Water” (2022)

      “Functional Leather” in process

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      Vibrant, Beaded Portraits by Felandus Thames Honor Memories and the Black Diaspora

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      “Wail on Whalers (portrait of Amos Haskin)” (2024), beads on coated wire and aluminum rod, 95 x 72 x 4 inches. Photos by Chris Gardner. All images courtesy of the artist, shared with permission

      Vibrant, Beaded Portraits by Felandus Thames Honor Memories and the Black Diaspora

      November 18, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

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      From thousands of colorful hair beads, Felandus Thames conjures vibrant patterns and portraits. He takes historical photographs as a starting point, focusing especially on Black and Indigenous figures whose stories have largely been underrepresented in American historical narrative. These include dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey and Amos Haskins, a 19th-century Wampanoag man who became a master mariner—one of the few Indigenous people to do so.

      Based in West Haven, Connecticut, Thames emphasizes powerful associations with materials. In the case of these portraits, he employs beads frequently used to style braids. Recent projects also include installations incorporating multiple hairbrushes. “Lately, I’ve been thinking about the affordances of material and their ability to necessitate an idea,” Thames tells Colossal. “I’ve been mining materials from my childhood,” he adds, delving into memories that connect him and others within the Black diaspora.

      “Untitled (portrait of Alvin Ailey)” (2025) hair beads on coated wire and aluminum rod, 60 x 41 x 4 inches

      These materials reference both historical and contemporary functions, from the use of beads and shells as currency in early societies to the way a beaded curtain was separated different areas within Thames’ childhood home. “In these works, I offer the everyday as cultural currency,” he says.

      Thames describes the mass-produced plastic components as “Black pixels,” akin to pieces of fabric patchworked together to form a quilt. A creative practice his maternal ancestors also pursued, quilting provides another “way of speaking to how carry memory with us,” he says. The neatly beaded strands, suspended from aluminum rods, also become almost fabric-like.

      In his recent work, Thames has been interested in the Black radical tradition, a philosophy that rejects colonial attitudes, such as slavery, racial segregation, and other forms of oppression. The Black Panthers and the civil rights movement evolved around this philosophy, with more recent examples including the Black Lives Matter movement.

      For Thames, Black radical tradition is “a form of resistance and insurgency” by people who took great leaps and made lasting change. “My focus gets beyond the outlier or exceptional individual, but thinking about people who have fostered sustainable change to the apparatus,” he says.

      “African King of Dubious Origins” (2022), hair beads on coated wire and aluminum rod, 48 x 78 1/4 x 4 inches

      Thames’ portraits exemplify changes or behavior that created something akin to what he calls a “scaffolding for substantive change.” Surrounded by vibrant patterns, their likenesses, often drawn from black-and-white archival photos, become timeless.

      “Wail on Whalers (portrait of Amos Haskin)” is currently part of Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty, and the Sea, which continues through January 19 at the Mystic Seaport Museum. Thames’ work is also currently on view in the group exhibition EXODUS at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, which continues through April 18, 2026. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

      “Jubilee” (2025), hair beads on coated wire with aluminum rod, 84.x 48 x 4 inches

      “Believed to be Jenny Freeman in her Sunday’s best” (2024-2025), plastic beads, coated wire, and aluminum, 92 1/2 x 60 x 4 inches

      “King David of Harlem” (2024), beads on coated wire with aluminum rod, 85 3/4 x 48 x 4 inches. Photo by John Bentham

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    • 113 Shares117 Views

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      Radiant Sculptures by Arghavan Khosravi Meditate on Subconscious Terrain

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      All images courtesy of Arghavan Khosravi, shared with permission

      Radiant Sculptures by Arghavan Khosravi Meditate on Subconscious Terrain

      November 14, 2025

      Art

      Grace Ebert

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      Known for addressing issues of censorship and inequality, Iranian artist Arghavan Khosravi (previously) has long utilized her bold, fragmented works to confront large-scale problems relevant around the world. Her alluring color palettes and delicate motifs catch the eye and are paired with distinct symbols of tension: a chain lock, cords binding body parts, and roiling flames.

      While her concerns are global, Khosravi has always considered her practice somewhat of a balm that helps her cope with trying times. And so the inward turn of her latest body of work perhaps ventures farther into this territory as she allows herself to delve deep into a personal and collective subconscious.

      The past year has engendered a period of introspection, which the artist translates into a collection of smaller, altar-esque pieces. She refers to them as “intimate constructions where interior space carries its own symbolism. It’s been a way to move inward for a moment, allowing ideas to surface without a predetermined destination.”

      Both the subconscious and symbolic have long figured prominently in her work, and recent pieces are similar. Many layer seemingly disparate components into surreal scenes, with recurring imagery of long, flowing hair, bright orbs of light, birds, and patterns from historic Persian architecture and design. Whereas earlier works frequently incorporated windows, doorways, and other portal-like structures, Khosravi’s newer pieces peer outward from inside, inviting the viewer into a new realm.

      The artist is in the early stages of preparing for an upcoming solo show at Uffner & Liu in New York next year. Until then, follow her practice on Instagram.

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    • 163 Shares168 Views

      in Art

      Against the Pyramids of Giza, Vhils’ Etched Portraits Are Monuments of the Everyday

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      All photos by Jose Pando Lucas, courtesy of Vhils, shared with permission

      Against the Pyramids of Giza, Vhils’ Etched Portraits Are Monuments of the Everyday

      November 12, 2025

      Art

      Grace Ebert

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      The poetic idea that “doors are the architecture of intimacy” grounds a new installation by Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, a.k.a. Vhils (previously). Against the stunning desert backdrop of the Pyramids of Giza, “Doors of Cairo” is a site-specific work featuring a layered collection of Vhils’ distinctive etched portraits. Faces peer out from the weathered structures, some of which nest in the sand while others tower above on scaffolding.

      Contrasting the ancient tombs with an installation that will dot the landscape for just a month, Vhils explores the ways we mark the world and how our imprints endure over time. “The pyramids were built for kings and gods, meant to last forever. My installation is made from wood and memory, and it will soon disappear,” he says. “Yet both belong to the same human impulse, to build, to remember, to leave a trace.”

      “Doors of Cairo” is part of the fifth Forever Is Now project, an ongoing exhibition curated by Art D’Égypte with the support of UNESCO. Vhils is the first Portuguese artist invited to participate in the project, and he tethers his homeland to the historic site. All 65 repurposed doors were sourced from demolition sites and renovation projects between the two countries, and each bears traces of former use, whether chipped paint, scuffed surfaces, or faint fingerprints that linger in a well-worn spot.

      The fragmented portraits don’t depict anyone specific but rather function as stand-ins for people past and present. “A single face can represent one person, but it can also stand for a community, a generation, or a shared emotional landscape,” the artist says. “It speaks to how people and places are inseparable, how memory becomes embedded in matter, and how identity is built from many invisible layers.”

      After six months of carving in his studio—and creating a smaller, sculptural iteration that will live beyond the outdoor installation—Vhils spent three days working on site, shaping and reshaping the composition. “It evolved intuitively, door by door, guided by their scale, texture, and rhythm,” he shares. “This project is a dialogue between the everyday and the eternal, between the wooden doors of ordinary lives and the stone pyramids that have outlasted civilisations. It is a reminder that even what is temporary can carry the weight of time.”

      “Doors of Cairo” is on view through December 7. Find more from the artist on Instagram.

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    • 138 Shares159 Views

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      Jacquard Weavings by Malaika Temba Explore Material, Community, and Global Trade

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      “Etched in Soil” (2025), part of ‘She Weaves White Gold’ at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. All images courtesy of Malaika Temba, shared with permission

      Jacquard Weavings by Malaika Temba Explore Material, Community, and Global Trade

      November 4, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

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      “My practice exists in the tension between rest and labor, between the intimacy of touch and the vast systems that shape our world,” says artist Malaika Temba. “Whether I am working on a small weaving or a large-scale installation, I am always asking what materials remember and who gets remembered through them.”

      Merging digital and analog processes, Temba creates layered textile pieces in an exploration of migration, labor, gender, global trade, and daily life. Using a Jacquard loom, she renders tender portraits of people and quotidian urban scenes, from friends seated together to deliveries being made to the hustle and bustle of daily life in the city.

      “Carry Home” (2024), Jacquard woven fabric, acrylic paint, and fabric dye, 49 x 64 inches

      Growing up, Temba lived in Saudi Arabia, Uganda, South Africa, Morocco, and the United States. In moving between countries, the Tanzanian-American artist tells Colossal, “I was always struck by how fabric marks culture, and how pattern, texture, and material can tell you where you are by what people wear, how they use cloth, and what materials are available to them—whether found in nature, brought through trade, or produced by industry.”

      In art school, Temba learned to use a Jacquard loom, which enables weavers to create intricate patterns using an automated method. Invented in the early 19th century by Joseph Marie Jacquard, the machines originally used a punch card system. By the 1980s, electronic versions reflected advances in computing, and today, these intricate mechanisms can be programmed to create virtually any design.

      “I learned to use a Jacquard loom and became fascinated by its duality: the loom as one of the oldest forms of human-coded technology and the Jacquard as a machine capable of extraordinary innovation,” Temba says. The method itself parallels the artist’s interest in material and systems. Recently, she has been interested specifically in sisal, a cultivated plant and fiber deeply entwined with labor and trade in Tanzania. Sisal is often used to make durable products like rugs, rope, bags, and more.

      The artist currently has an installation titled She Weaves White Gold on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art, comprising three pieces set against ornate wallpaper. In this work, Temba employs sisal as both the primary material and the concept, as she portrays individuals and communities “carrying stories of work, migration, and endurance across geographies and through systems of production and exchange.”

      “(Aunties Patterned Dresses)” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric, 60.5 x 51.5 inches.

      After creating the main textile element, Temba often hand-manipulates the fabric by unravelling areas, adding paint, and silkscreening. These layered elements add to a sense that the work is always in a state of flux—simultaneously constructed and undone. “Over time, these pieces have grown larger, more collaged, and richer in texture, capturing multiple moments within a single woven scene,” she says.

      Temba’s work honors the lives and labor of especially people in East Africa. “With tense elections in Tanzania and the ongoing war in Sudan, I am thinking a lot about visibility, dignity, and what it means to represent ordinary people at a time when their stories are often reduced to headlines or statistics,” she says. “Creating these works is a way of slowing down that narrative, of insisting that daily life—the gestures of care, the rhythm of work, and the persistence of women—has value and deserves to be seen.”

      She Weaves White Gold remains on view through autumn 2026 in Raleigh. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

      “Beauty Salon” (2023), Jacquard woven fabric, silkscreen ink, painting, and sewing machine embroidery, 50 x 70 inches

      “Blue Diana (I don’t know what lighter feels like)” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 69 x 51 3/4 inches

      Detail of “Blue Diana (I don’t know what lighter feels like)”

      “Preparing Dinner” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 61 x 52 inches

      “Veggie Market” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 57.5 x 51.75 inches

      “Bismillah Auto Repair” (2024), Jacquard woven fabric, chalk, and sewing thread, 60 x 46 inches

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    • 138 Shares129 Views

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      Through Fractured Forms, Kat Kristof Renders the Architecture of the Mind

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      “Echo” (2025), oil on canvas, 230 x 230 centimeters. All images courtesy of Beers London, shared with permission

      Through Fractured Forms, Kat Kristof Renders the Architecture of the Mind

      October 20, 2025

      Art

      Grace Ebert

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      As we spend much of our lives online and find ourselves ensnared in an increasingly dystopian reality, glitches and fractures seem all the more apt in rendering the contemporary mind. Kat Kristof (previously) attends to this disjointed—and even duplicitous—feeling in her vivid portraiture. Visible brushstrokes invoke gestures past and the memories that scaffold our lives, while layered patches build upon one another, forming complex structures within each piece.

      “My work explores the architecture of the mind. These are scattered, fragmented, and riotous projections of self,” Kristof says, referring to her latest body of work, Exhale. Co-presented by BEERS London and Saatchi Gallery, the exhibition plumbs the artist’s formal training in architecture, which she undertook in her native Hungary before moving to Folkestone, Kent. Likening the abstract shapes that form a face or torso to a hallway or room, the artist invites viewers into the intimate interiors of her subjects.

      “Doubt I” (2025), oil on canvas, 180 x 180 centimeters

      While each portrait contains some level of psychological distortion, Kristof expands and contracts their surreal qualities. “Echo,” for example, features a mirrored subject looking directly at the viewer, although the figure on the right peers out from a face turned upside down. The gltich in “Alone” is much more jarring, as two faces stare at each other through a central stripe bisecting the work.

      For Kristof, there’s endless space for our minds to break into new territories, although like the walls that protect our homes, there are barriers we have to cross to step outside ourselves. “What we long for remains elusive, not because it doesn’t exist, but because we carry our mindset with us,” she adds.

      Exhale runs from October 23 to November 16 at Saatchi Gallery in London. Find more from Kristof on her website and Instagram.

      “Alone” (2025), oil on canvas, 125 x 145 centimeters

      “Drift” (2025), oil on canvas, 220 x 175 centimeters

      “Blur” (2025), oil on board, 80 x 60 centimeters

      “Breathe” (2025), oil on canvas, 220 x 115 centimeters

      “Crave” (2025), oil on canvas, 150 x 100 centimeters

      “Exhale” (2025), oil on canvas, 170 x 145 centimeters

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    • 125 Shares199 Views

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      Stan Squirewell’s Mixed-Media Collages Imbue Anonymous Historical Photos with Panache

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      “She Saw Far and Wide” (2023), mixed media, photo collage, acrylic paint, and glitter mounted on canvas in a hand-carved frame, 90 x 76 inches. All images courtesy of the artist, Claire Oliver Gallery, and Plattsburgh State Art Museum, shared with permission

      Stan Squirewell’s Mixed-Media Collages Imbue Anonymous Historical Photos with Panache

      October 16, 2025

      ArtPhotography

      Kate Mothes

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      Nothing sparks the imagination quite like coming across a trove of old photographs. We look for writing on the reverse and scan the anonymous faces to read a range of expressions. Where exactly they were at that moment, what brought them together that day, and who took the picture? For Stan Squirewell, the allure of historical portraits is a central tenet of his multimedia practice.

      In large-scale, mixed-media collages, the artist begins with black-and-white photographs, typically taken a century ago or longer. He especially emphasizes portraits of Black individuals, whether gathered together as a group or posing independently. Some of these compositions start with a formal portrait in a studio, while others have more of a snapshot quality. On their clothing, Squirewell collages fabric patterns, paint, and glitter, inviting the past into the present.

      “Awinita” (2022), mixed-media collage, paint, and hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 59 x 45 inches

      Squirewell’s current solo exhibition, Robitussin, Hotcombs & Grease at Plattsburgh State Art Museum, delves into Black identity and daily experience. The title nods to ubiquitous items as “hallmarks of domesticity and comfort in Black homes,” the museum says, focusing on “the reclamation of identity from historical anonymity.”

      Squirewell sources photographs from the Smithsonian Institution’s anonymous photo collections and from family and friends. Through the intimate medium of the portrait, anonymous individuals emerge from the archives and are imbued with vivacious textile patterns, and recognizable luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci suggest elevated style and status. Scale also plays a role, too, as Squirewell prints the photos quite large, blurring features in the process yet representing the figures closer to life-size so that their presence is palpable.

      Robitussin, Hotcombs & Grease continues through December 5. Plan your visit on the museum’s website, and find more of the artist’s work on Instagram.

      “Uncle O,” cut photograph collage mounted on canvas, oil, and glitter in hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 62.5 x 32.5 inches

      “Colorful Joseph II” (2024), cut and collaged archival photography, glitter, and paint, 15.5 x 12.5 inches

      “Chico & Charles 3” (2025), manipulated photo-collage, 42 x 26 inches

      “Almaz & Lil Symphony”, mixed media collage, paint, and hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 57 x 40 inches

      “Dai Dai” (2022), mixed-media collage, paint, and hand-carved shou sugi van frame, 47 x 39 inches

      “Benny & Al,” mixed media, photo collage, acrylic paint, and glitter in a hand-carved frame, 88 x 58 inches

      “He’s Home” (2024), artist-printed photos collaged with paint and glitter in a hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 20 x 12 inches

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    • 175 Shares199 Views

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      The First Monograph to Survey Derrick Adams’ Career Comes Ahead of a Major Exhibition

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      “Floater 93” (2020), acrylic and fabric collage on paper, overall 100 x 50 inches. Photos by John Bergens. All images courtesy of Derrick Adams and Monacelli, shared with permission

      The First Monograph to Survey Derrick Adams’ Career Comes Ahead of a Major Exhibition

      October 15, 2025

      ArtBooks

      Kate Mothes

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      Whether portraying families at play, people walking along urban streets, or portraits of individuals, Derrick Adams celebrates Black identity and experience. His collage-like compositions evoke West African masks, reliquary figures, and other carved sculptures, highlighting contemporary, everyday scenes and leisure activities of Black Americans.

      A new monograph from Monacelli surveys more than two decades of Adams’ geometric paintings, made in his signature multihued, faceted style. Derrick Adams is the first monograph to survey the artist’s entire career, tracing his stylistic evolution and the themes that recur throughout his paintings. His paintings capture “moments of joy, resilience, and celebration,” says a statement from the publisher.

      “Figure in the Urban Landscape 15” (2018), acrylic, graphite, ink, fabric collage, grip tape,
      and model cars on wood panel, 48 x 48 x 3 inches

      Organized into three sections—Channeling, Signaling, and Mirroring—the book highlights the artist’s explorations of representation, identity, and the media. We also trace the evolution of his visual language, which he describes as “seriocomic imagery,” along with his “desire to see Black American experiences mirrored in art, in part rectifying the dearth of such imagery in art history,” the publisher says. “At its core, Adams’s project is a reinvigoration of the Black figure in art, an intention seen throughout the works in the book.”

      The release of Derrick Adams sets the stage for a mid-career survey of the artist’s work at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Titled View Finder, the show opens on April 16 and will present 150 works.

      Derrick Adams is slated for release on October 22. Pre-order your copy from the Colossal Shop, and explore more on Adams’ website and Instagram.

      “Black Mirror” (2023), acrylic and fabric collage on wood panel, 30 x 30 inches

      “Only Happy Thoughts” (2024), acrylic and fabric collage on wood panel, 60 x 60 inches

      “Onward and Upward” (2021), acrylic on wood panel, 72 x 192 ⅛ inches

      “Pot Head 3” (2025), acrylic on wood panel, 28 x 14 inches

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