Painting with Memory: Manuela Solano's Reinvention After Sight Loss

9 hours ago7 min read2 comments

Artist Manuela Solano articulates a profound truth that resonates with neuroscientists and philosophers alike: 'I’ve heard that memories change every time we revisit them. This means everybody faces the problem of remembering.' For Solano, this is not an abstract concept but the foundation of a new artistic reality forged after losing her sight. Her creative world, once built on visual observation, has been fundamentally rebuilt through touch and the active reconstruction of memory.Her process is a physical dialogue with the past, where she traces the shifting contours of recollection with her hands, translating these imperfect, evolving forms into textured art. This journey mirrors a universal human experience—the necessary, often disorienting, rewrite of personal narrative following profound change.Interviews with individuals navigating life-altering ruptures, from illness to loss, consistently reveal that our self-story requires active authorship, not passive recall. Solano’s practice embodies this psychological adaptation.She does not merely paint *from* memory; she paints *with* it, engaging her past perceptions in a dynamic conversation. Each artwork becomes a new version of a moment, forever altered by the lens of her present.This aligns with the scientific view of memory as a dynamic narrative, constantly reconsolidated with each act of remembrance. Her textured canvases and tactile material choices are a testament to a sensory world reconstructed from the ground up.Her story is one of profound resilience, defined not by a return to a former self, but by the courageous creation of a new way of being. Solano’s art challenges us to consider the fluidity of our own stories and the beautiful, unsettling novelty that emerges when we are forced to stop seeing the world as it was, and instead learn to feel it as it is.

#featured

#Manuela Solano

#blindness

#painting

#memory

#art process

#adaptation

#visual arts

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