Sabrina Montiel-Soto. Little Venice and other possible realities

The name of Venezuela is said to have originated from an expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. Upon arriving at the Venezuelan coast, the stilt houses in the area of Lake Maracaibo reminded the navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, of the city of Venice, so he named the region “Veneziola”, literally “little Venice”.

Venezuelian artist Sabrina Montiel-Soto, resident in Brussels and born in the country where such etymologies originated, delivers a work where both identities meet, by exploring one another while acknowledging their respective cultures. Her work confronts two realities, the indigenous and the Venetian, each with their own particular aesthetics and graphic identities. The artist takes up the role of an alchemist, who adopts one identity and overlays the other, contrasting them both in a fictional dialogue of instances made up of mixed media such as printmaking (etchings, typography, monoprint), sculpture-like objects, sound and video.
Montiel-Soto hides the obvious and leaves the essential, to create the mystery of what it is now, what was once and what could yet be, from an old colonist’s point of view. All artwork has been created during the residency at the Scuola international di grafica di Venezia and in cooperation with Artist Pension Trust>®

Vai alla guida d'arte di Venice