CEAM Welcomes Rafael Soldi
CRISP-ELLERT ART MUSEUM WELCOMES PERUVIAN ARTIST RAFAEL SOLDI
ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida (October 14, 2024) – Flagler College welcomes Seattle-based Peruvian born artist and independent curator Rafael Soldi as the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum’s (CEAM) Artist-in-Residence from Saturday, November 16 through Saturday, November 30, 2024. An artist talk with Soldi will be held on Friday, November 22 at 6:30pm at Flagler College’s Ringhaver Student Center Virginia Room, 50 Sevilla Street, downtown St. Augustine. This event is free and open to the public.
Rafael Soldi is an artist and curator based in Seattle, Washington that utilizes video, photography, installation, text and performance to comment on masculinity, language, immigration, violence, and memory, informed by his queer, Peruvian identity. Soldi blends personal history with collective memory to explore how gender expectations are deeply embedded in language and childhood games — and how they can be destabilized. His recent works implicate a type of masculinity that favors violence and erases the necessity of intimacy and connection.
During his residency, Soldi will work on his upcoming book, titled Soft Boy, and engage with students and faculty through class visits, student critiques, and public programming. Soldi’s text-based works focus on the fluidity and dissonance of the bilingual experience, revealing the gendered power structures integrated into language. Rafael analyzes this state of in-betweenness, providing nuanced insight into immigrant identity while also offering a rich metaphor for queer experience.
The CEAM Artist Residency, in collaboration with Flagler College’s Department of Art & Design, is a regular program of artists-in-residence to engage in themes of place-making while collaborating with some aspect of St Augustine’s local community, the city’s significant and varied roles in American history, or its rich natural environment. A goal of the residency is to foster diverse perspectives on these aspects of our local community, and artists and scholars in a range of fields are invited to integrate and collaborate between the areas of fine art and broader fields of inquiry, such as curatorial practice, performing arts, and creative writing.
A grant from the Dr. JoAnn Crisp-Ellert Fund and The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida backs the CEAM Artist Residency. CEAM programming is also supported by the St. Johns County Tourist Development Council, the St. Johns Cultural Council and voco, an IGH hotel. For further information on our programming, please visit the website at www.flagler.edu/ceam, or contact interim director Helena Rodriguez at 904-826-8530 or crispellert@flagler.edu. Photos to accompany the press release can be found here. Follow along on social media @crispellertart
