Starchive: Kobe Jackson Visits Edgar Solorzano
Edgar Solórzano
→MFA SC 2026
Kobe Jackson
→MA GAC 2025
Tuesday, November 5, 2024, 4 PM
I walked into Edgar’s 5th floor studio in Fletcher. It was split in half for sharing with another sculptor, but he had the large semicircular window side, framing a majestic west-facing view of Weybosset Street from above as sunlight electrified the horizon.
KJ What is this project about?
ES It’s about a post-WW II American moment, in the 1950s. Mexican culture was never that influenced by American culture up until then. Then they opened the gates and tons of Mexicans came to work here in the steel industry to make weapons for WW II. When they went back to Mexico, there was the first big Mexican-American cross cultural influx. This was when my parents were born and raised. It happened again in the ’90s when I was growing up. It’s funny how these two moments touched my two closest family generations.
Right now I’m working on a floral pattern from the ’50s/’60s. I’m upholstering this folding chair that has no identity and that you could buy anywhere in the world. I tore the thing apart and drilled the rivets out. I like the gesture of upholstering. It elevates an object’s status but also protects it and makes it yours. It makes a hard object softer. We do the same thing with homes. When homes are industrialized, with the same floor plan in thousands of places, you adopt the shell and make it your own.
KJ Did you research the history of the folding chair?
ES The first design for this patent was made by a Black person in America for places with choirs.
KJ What caused the influx of American culture into Mexico in the ’90s?
ES A commercial treaty made between Canada, the US, and Mexico. They lowered taxes on imports and exports. In the ’90s, I was watching Cartoon Network. When I went on a trip to San Francisco as a small kid, I came back dressed as Fred Durst from Limp Biskit. Everything was super Americanized, even the school I went to in Mexico City was American. Before that, it was just like, the neighbors, yeah, whatever. Now it’s a bit less aspirational than it was when I was growing up. Referencing this moment, I’m working on a myth, I call it pearl corn flakes. Cornflake cereal was introduced to Mexico in the 1950s. Growing up, I was always reading the stories on the backs of cereal boxes in English, so the work is about eating and consuming the culture.
I’m connecting it to something really precious that you want to take care of—a pearl. Historically, the first cultured pearl was obtained in Japan, but the first commercial pearl farm was in Mexico. It disappeared, allegedly, because when they built the Hoover Dam, it contaminated the river and destroyed the farm. I like to play with where pearls come from and how pearls were a symbol of geopolitical power. No one had pearls in their own European countries, they were all from South East Asia, Latin American colonies, or Mexico. It was this new jewel that Europeans and Americans used to show off that they had power somewhere else. For me, it’s a funny thing to make pearl cornflakes. Kellogg was a super hard core Christian conservative person; he basically invented corn flakes so people would be less excited, masturbate less, and have less sexual arousal. I was raised Catholic, and in the ’50s, Catholics in Mexico wanted to stop industrialization and all these external things, so there’s also a thing about how corn flakes are related to indoctrination.
For my midterm crit, I made a really long chain necklace. At the bottom, it had a small pearl; it was kind of humorous. Before this, I was super serious. Chains are related to so many things, having a domestic and industrial tension. I like how they have an industrial origin and become super delicate, soft and tender, by changing the scale.
KJ Your past work seems pretty ambitious. Could you tell me a bit about your background with sculpture?
ES I have a background as an architect. At first, I was doing a lot of work about the spatial experience and how personal it is. You have to translate it to two dimensions to communicate it and a person has to translate it back. Lately, I’ve been making work about taking up space and the idea of installations. Sometimes it's just one object and how something can denote a bigger space. For instance, the pattern on the upholstery fabric I used on the folding chair would probably transport you back to your grandmother's place, a living room or domestic space. I’m interested in those things that can spark a bigger reading. Aesthetics are always politics.
The last part of my projects is understanding which material works best to develop the idea. Many times the final result is something that I have no idea how to do, so either I seek someone who can help me with it or I train myself. And sometimes, the realization is that there should not be a piece, but just a text.
KJ Did you quit architecture?
ES I did, like eight years ago.
KJ What made you quit?
ES I had a small firm with a couple of friends. One of our clients was from the government in a really corrupt state in Mexico. We were offered a lot of money to do really dirty stuff and we declined. It was either take it and never be able to leave the corruption circle or quit and close the office. I decided to quit. Then I worked in a really soul-crushing corporate interior design firm for one year where I didn't really care much about the clients or the projects. During that time, my dad almost passed away. We were really close; we were saying goodbye while my clients were calling me. He was in the hospital and I told my boss that I couldn’t go and he was like yeah, but you have to come and I was like, that’s not going to happen. I was 27 and had the feeling that my life was starting to stabilize in a way that I didn’t want it to. I was in a really long relationship, the next thing would be getting married, working as an architect in a firm that I didn’t really care about. So I was like damn, no.
KJ You broke up?
ES Yeah, we broke up and I quit my job. As a little kid, I was always drawing and painting and I decided to try being a self-taught artist for a year, thinking if it doesn’t work, I’ll go back. That was eight years ago.
KJ Have you shown your work before RISD, in galleries?
ES Galleries in Colombia, Germany, the United States two or three times, but mostly Mexico, in galleries and sometimes art fairs.
KJ What kinds of galleries in the US?
ES They invited me to the GSD Gallery at Harvard. And in L.A. a couple of small things, but mostly I’ve showed in different cities in Mexico. Actually tomorrow I leave for Mexico because I have a solo show opening on Thursday.
KJ Do you identify as Mestizo?
ES Yeah, definitely. As a Mexican, I think it’s hard not to. Now and then, you’ll find someone who identifies just as Spanish which is weird and usually I wouldn’t trust that much. I know there are completely Spanish people in Mexico and I know I probably genetically have more Spanish blood than Indigenous blood because of my physique and last names. But still it’s weird for a Mexican to say they are 100% Spanish.
KJ Does that inform your work?
ES I think it informs it. I’ve never really worked around my identity. I don’t think it’s as present in the art conversation in Mexico as it is here. It was here that I realized that I’m white and also Hispanic. Through my projects here at RISD, it’s probably one of the first times I’m talking about why my childhood was so influenced by another culture.
KJ What was the first sculpture that you made after you quit architecture?
ES There were two. One was when I got invited to this small independent gallery that was situated in a gentrified area at the time. There was a small plaza with benches. Someone heard that they were going to take all the benches out and put in new ones. When I was doing my research on the neighborhood, I noticed that the benches were where people made really personal intimate memories that attach them to the place. I made a 1:1 scale bench that was painted on screens and placed it near an open window so the neighborhood wind would move this ghostly floating bench.
The other was about the ironwork that keeps people from climbing into private properties. In Mexico, they are all over the place. I’m obsessed with and have a really big photo collection of them. I’ve always loved how they change shapes, colors, and designs. I wanted to understand what made them appear. I found a graph of house robberies at the Mexico City Justice Department and realized that cactuses bloom where robberies have occurred. I connected a map of where people have seen cactuses in Mexico City. I made twelve replicas of the same ironworks to talk about the scarcity of both economic and natural resources. When there’s more water in the desert, cactuses bloom and where there’s more money, people adorn these security fences more. When there’s scarcity, there are only two steel bars, and when there’s more money, floral motifs and all this complex work happens.
KJ Money is like water for cactuses …
ES Yeah, water is for cactuses what money is for ironworks because the morphology of both is only to protect the resource that is inside.
Edgar Solórzano wants to see more objects and less images.