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About
Lisa C Soto was born in Los Angeles, California and had a bi-continental upbringing between the South of Spain and New York City. In her sculptures, paintings and video there is always a reference to and details from landscape, topography or cartography. Soto creates works that abstract the language of maps reflecting changing borders of both the mind and the landscape in this contemporary world.
She has exhibited in places such as New York, Italy, Spain, New Orleans, and the Dominican Republic, and has participated in residencies, public art shows and received commissions in the U.S., Europe and the Caribbean.
Artist Statement
Cartography is the foundation I use to discover, interpret and reveal the world from a new point of view. My sculptures reconfigure world maps to create reinvented landscapes and modify frontier lines to better highlight the relationship between disparate places, landscapes and people. The work opens a dialogue regarding social issues with an underlying political layer using imagery derived from nature—specifically cartography—and details from different “scapes” including landscape, seascape, outer space and even mindscape.
From reconfigured world maps to formations enclosed in Petri dishes, fishing nets created out of tiny imaginary islands to foreign coins in the shape of the U.S. map, the work explores global concerns, such as the world becoming an interdependent society where traditional borders are shifting or disappearing altogether. These works, which are in a sense map mutations, are created by overlapping outlines of maps and motifs specific to particular cultures and tribes then breaking and distorting them to create new forms. My process of drawing, cutting, sewing and layering forms, uses such materials as Mylar, graphite, pigments, thread, paper, coins and earth.
Moreover, I do not underestimate the power and sensuality of color and the way visual opulence can connect the viewer to the work's emotional base. The work strives to engage both the intellect and the emotional circuits--a reaction of the nervous system, perhaps, is what I am striving for in the midst of creating these imagined worlds.
Declaración de la artista
Mi obra es una reinterpretación abstracta del paisaje del cuerpo, el entorno y la mente, formando una única visión. Los temas se desarrollan sobre líneas y formas inspiradas en la topografía. Sobre una estructura de reinvenciones cartográficas - fronteras políticas, continentes, islas o placas tectónicas -
surgen imágenes de padrones, símbolos, detalles de paisajes... esbozos solapados de países y territorios.
Mis trabajos son un híbrido de pintura y collage. Los materiales más utilizados son la pintura, el grafito, pigmentos, hilo, papel y acuarelas sobre Mylar. Éste último, un material plástico traslucido, permite apreciar las distintas capas de formas, líneas y colores, representando la multiplicidad cultural. Muchas de las imágenes son recogidas a través de viajes por varios países. Las trabajo, fragmentándolas y distorsionándolas, para integrarlas en los cuadros, creando nuevas formas. Actualmente, estoy trabajando en una serie de obras tituladas conjuntamente "global child", que es el resultado de la exploración de mi misma como ente multicultural. El tema subraya la capacidad de una persona que comparte varias tradiciones culturales para inventar una nueva. Este dominio personal crea una nueva perspectiva, una manera distinta de asomarse a la sociedad e interactuar con los demás. De algún modo, nacemos sin las tradicionales fronteras.