HOUSTON, TX.- The University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum is presenting new work by Chilean-American artist Soledad Salamé in her first solo museum exhibition. Soledad Salamé: Camouflage will be on view through March 7, 2026.

For Camouflage, Soledad Salamé locates moments in which nature’s resilience meets human resourcefulness. In a newly commissioned body of work, Salamé centers the environmental impact of discarded clothing, sent from the U.S. to be discarded in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. There, millions of pounds of disposable textiles, often called “fast fashion,” are dumped and piled – creating uncanny mountainous topographies. In video, mixed media work, and prints, Salamé translates aerial photos of the Atacama into dizzying camouflage fields where she elaborates weighty details with needle and thread. The visual abstraction of the clothing piles subtly underscores the resourcefulness of migrant communities that have gathered and organized around them; Salamé's research bridges the environmental and human impact of fast fashion’s waste. Three sculptural garments, made from handmade paper, bioplastics and algae, and pineapple husks, respectively, propose alternative forms of making clothing from natural materials. Each of these garments is dedicated to an ecosystem: Desert, Ocean, and Rainforest.

In this exhibition, Salamé's newest body of work is contextualized by previous bodies of work that similarly explore topographies (re)shaped by acts of humanity. In particular, her 12-part mixed-media installation, Gulf Distortions (2011) studies the disastrous BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Well blowout and its impact upon the landscapes of the Gulf Coast. The exhibition underscores Salamé's radical re- thinking of printmaking and materiality. Salamé made Gulf Distortions, for example, by running photographs (made in collaboration with photographer Michael Koryta) through a fax machine before silkscreening, handpainting, and cutting the images on Mylar. The result is an image field that is simultaneously contemporary and timeless, which draws on Salamé's training as a master printer while underscoring her lifelong dedication to formal experimentation.

Soledad Salamé (b. Chile) is a Baltimore-based artist who research-driven work studies the connections between art, science, nature, and technology. From 1973- 1983, Salam lived in Venezuela, where she studied Industrial and Graphic Design, eventually completing an MA at Centro de Ensenñanza Grafica (Cegra), CONAC, in Caracas. In 1983, she moved to Washington, DC before relocating to Baltimore, where she established her studio. Since then, her work as moved between print, painting, and new media, always drawing from extensive research and material experimentation. Salamé's work is represented in numerous private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC; The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, MD; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the University of Essex, UK; among others. Her work was first presented in Houston at the Transart Foundation by Surpik Angelini.