Review

A review of Atmósferas liminal en tiempo real:
Photographs by Lissette Solorzano (1990 — 2010)

Lissette Solorzano, "Untitled," photograph, from the "Made in Cuba" series, 1994. Image: courtesy of the gallery and artist

Cara and Cabezas Contemporary
(exhibition hosted at Dead Sea Artworks)
Kansas City, Missouri
November 2 — December 4, 2010

"If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Lissette Solorzano and her camera challenge George Berkeley's philosophical riddle by capturing moments in between the perceptions of existence.* Solorzano uses reflections, distortions, and blurred images within each frame to convey a message of  being on the threshold of reality. In the Cuban artist's latest solo exhibition, her photographs float from a suspension system that lends to their atmosphere and focuses the viewers' experience on being between existential planes.

The retrospective is a collection of black-and-white photographs from the past 20 years, combined with color photographs from her recent visit to the United States. The images are carefully planned shots that reflect Solorzano's interest in hybrid cultures. As she works, she often seeks to translate the contradiction of where different cultures meet. In the West Bottoms of Kansas City, she photographed a large advertisement for American Spirit cigarettes inside a Somali hookah bar. For another group of photographs, she spent time with women in Russia, where many Cuban men go to select wives.

Solorzano is the phantom who walks between cultures and space, documenting a strange landscape that is rarely noticed. Even on her photographic missions, Solorzano admits that she does not notice some aspects of her surroundings that her lens captures. She travels through forgotten and unnoticed streets, developing a new attitude and taking the role of her subject. As she forces herself to morph in between these identities, she is able to share a perception of people interacting with their ephemeral landscape. People can identify with her camera's definition, often relying on the photographs' reality as the prints reveal what is otherwise overlooked. The selection of work from the collection, Made in Cuba, is intended to be a large portrait of that country, capturing spontaneous moments of life, hidden realities, and unrealized habits of the society.

Lissette Solorzano "Untitled," photograph (matted view) from "Made in Cuba" series, 2000. Image: courtesy of the gallery and artist

Overlooking basic aspects of everyday life seems effortless, while some aspects within a given society are purposefully hidden because they are uncomfortable, controversial, or hurtful. Solorzano effectively brings these issues to the forefront of her viewer's mind by making them the subject of her camera lens's eye, even in her early career. At  21 years-old, she photographed the series Fantasmos Efirmos in one day with one roll of film. She had been spending time in a senior home at the time of her grandfather's death. The photographs reveal the instability of consciousness, of being stuck in between a long life and death. At the time, photographers were not delving into heavy and hidden topics like distortions of body and mind. The series gained her notoriety with Cuban male photographers and a spot on the Cuban Writers and Artists Union (Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba / UNEAC).

In many of the photographs in her latest presentation, Solorzano recognizes the unknown with dark figures. In the window of a San Francisco school, paired with the reflection of a dark faceless figure were the self-portraits children had lined up in the window. The photograph toys with the idea of a mysterious reality and self-constructed identity. The children's faces are obviously distorted, suggesting an interesting contradiction and supposing the children lined their reflections up with their drawings; Solorzano superimposes perception onto reality.

Lissette Solorzarno. "Fantasmas Efimros (Ephemeral Phantoms)," photograph, 1992. Image: courtesy of the gallery and artist

Reactions to reality are made more difficult when the said-reality is not in the line of vision. Boundaries are experienced though not always visible, created and ignored by people in the same moment. Along one wall of photographs, Cubans are depicted facing north towards Florida. One man is dressed in religious garb, contemplatively scanning the horizon, while another is involved in the kinetic motion of diving directly into the sea that separates Cuba from the United States. In Kansas City, Lissette Solorzano was intrigued by the vast loneliness she felt here in comparison to her home in Havanna, Cuba. She recognized the significance of Latinos and immigrants in the area — but that their presence is seldom noticed. One photograph speaks of the barrier of language: a muddy puddle reflects a road sign with writing in different languages.

In the fast pace of life, we are not always able to see all the details and contemplate the depth of their subliminal messages. Solorzano has dialed down her pace to capture the unperceived. In the most and least likely circumstances, people are surrounded by a diverse array of influences. In many of her photographs, Solorzano found direct politics that would otherwise be overlooked and forgotten. In Cuba, she photographed a bus filled with people completely oblivious to the significance of the printed Che Guavera image staring from man's T-shirt out through the window. In the series American Black & White, a couple seem to be ignoring the mural of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and what his image has come to stand for. The patriotism inherent to the remnants of an American flag also go unnoticed by people caught up in the rush of the big city.

Lissette Solorzano, "Untitled," photograph, from "American Black & White" series, 2001. Image: courtesy of the gallery and artist

People can be completely unaware of their surroundings or how they are acting within them. Once they become aware that they are the object of another's consciousness, they put on a façade. As if it is put on a stage, everyday life becomes simulated as a performance, and we play along. Solorzano fights to remain a silent bystander so she can maintain a spontaneous portfolio. Often, she uses windows and reflections as the smoke screen for her identity, forcing her into a liminal presence: in between here and there.

Editor's note:

* This quote is difficult to verify on the Internet, even using scholar-database tools. The phrasing varies according to source, and Review has not found a certifiable original one so far; however, the fact that it is attributed to Berkeley seems solid. If anyone has a reference book or other source containing the quote, we would be delighted to learn.

-re-

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