Michelle Solorzano ( she/her )

My work explores cultural identity shaped by colonization, migration, and assimilation. Drawing from the Dominican Carnaval, a tradition that blends performance, satire, and resistance, my sculptures examine how cultural celebrations can challenge social hierarchies and colonial legacies. While Carnaval is widely known for its vibrant costumes and parades, it also creates space for critique and protest through humor, symbolism, and folklore.

Growing up in the Dominican Republic, I was taught a version of history shaped by colonial perspectives that prioritized European narratives while minimizing Indigenous and African contributions. Migrating to the United States deepened my desire to investigate the overlooked and misrepresented aspects of Dominican culture. My work seeks to question these colonial narratives while acknowledging the complex fusion of Taíno, African, and Spanish influences that shape Dominican identity.

In recent work, I revisit the familiar image of La Niña de la Espina (The Girl with a Splinter), a figure commonly found in Dominican households. The image depicts a young girl calmly removing a splinter from her foot and has long carried a quiet sense of nostalgia and intimacy for me. Through research, I discovered that this figure appears throughout Latin America and may trace its origins to a European lithograph inspired by the Hellenistic sculpture Spinario.

By reimagining La Niña within new sculptural narratives, I take her out of her traditional context and place her into scenarios informed by Caribbean aesthetics, personal memory, and contemporary social realities. La Niña becomes a vessel for layered storytelling, bridging nostalgia and transformation while reflecting on the ways cultural images migrate, evolve, and take on new meaning.

Through sculpture, my practice reclaims overlooked histories and contributes to a broader visual language that centers cultural hybridity, memory, and identity.

Michelle Solorzano is a figurative ceramic sculptor whose work explores themes of immigration, identity, and culture. Solorzano holds a BFA in Visual Arts with concentrations in Painting and Ceramics from the State University of New York at Potsdam and an MFA in Ceramics from Indiana University’s Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design.Based in California, Solorzano completed a year-long Artist Residency at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in 2025 and is currently an Artist in Residence at Laguna Clay Company. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Ceramics at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.Her work has received national recognition, including being named a 2025 NCECA Emerging Artist and recipient of the Helen Zucker Seeman Writing and Research Fellowship for Women. She was also selected as a 2024 Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist and has received the Bloomington Arts Commission Emerging Artist Grant, the Christyl Ann Boger Memorial Award, and the Nelda Christ Memorial Award.