“My art is a conceptual and visual exploration of the intersections of science, technology, ecology, and social justice that define our contemporary world. Engaging the political and human implications of environmental change, my work investigates the experiences of vulnerable communities disproportionately affected by climate crisis, displacement, and natural disaster.”1 — Soledad Salamé
Born in Santiago in 1954, Soledad Salamé is a Chilean-born interdisciplinary artist based in Baltimore. Her practice spans printmaking, sculpture, installation, photography, video, and mixed media, combining rigorous research with poetic visual language to examine the intersections of environmental change, technology, migration, and human rights.
After earning a BA from Santiago College in Chile in 1972, Salamé pursued advanced studies at CEGRA, Centro de Enseñanza Gráfica, CONAC, in Caracas, completing her studies in 1979. Her academic formation combined traditional printmaking methodologies with experimental graphic processes, fostering an early interest in materiality, seriality, and the relationship between image-making and systems of communication. During her years in Caracas, Salamé was immersed in an intellectually and politically dynamic cultural environment that encouraged interdisciplinary inquiry and socially engaged artistic practice.
From 1973 to 1983 she lived in Venezuela, where her encounter with the Amazon rainforest profoundly shaped her artistic vision and enduring engagement with ecological systems. This experience marked a decisive shift in her practice, expanding her investigation from formal concerns into broader questions of environmental vulnerability, geopolitical conflict, and the ethics of human intervention in natural landscapes. She relocated to Washington in 1983 before establishing her studio practice in Baltimore shortly after.
Grounded in extensive field research throughout the Americas and Antarctica, Salamé’s work investigates the environmental and social consequences of climate change, extractive industry, and technological intervention. “Drawing from discourses in environmental humanities, political ecology, and postcolonial studies, her practice examines how systems of power, resource extraction, and global capitalism disproportionately affect vulnerable populations and fragile ecosystems.”2
Her recent projects focus particularly on migration and displacement caused by environmental instability and political inequity, as well as the devastating ecological impact of the global clothing industry and so-called “fast fashion.” “Engaging questions of labor, consumption, waste, and transnational production networks, these works critically address the material and human costs embedded within contemporary economies of mass consumption.”3 Through collaborations with scientists, environmental researchers, and technologists, she creates works that merge empirical inquiry with material experimentation and immersive installation. “By integrating scientific data, cartographic methodologies, and sensory experience, Salamé constructs immersive environments that operate simultaneously as aesthetic encounters and forms of socio-political critique.”4
Salamé’s work is held in numerous public and private collections worldwide, including the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the University of Essex, UK, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and Deutsche Bank in New York, among others. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including El Museo del Barrio, the Denver Art Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile, the Katonah Museum of Art, the Museum of the Americas, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Miami Art Museum, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Contemporary Museum of Baltimore, and the Museum of Goa in India. In 2025, her work was the focus of a career survey at the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, Texas.
Major projects include: Fast Fashion: Camouflage (2025–26); We The Migrants: Fleeing/Flooding, 2019; The Women’s March, 2017; Are You Listening?, 2016; ALMA, Atacama Large Millimeter Array, 2014; Territories, 2013-14; Barcodes: Merging Identity and Technology, 2012; Where Do You Live? 3000 Miles of Maryland Coast, 2009; Aguas Vivas and the Labyrinth of Solitude, 2001.
Footnotes: (1) Soledad Salame in conversation 2025; (2)(3) & (4) Amy Raehse in conversation 2025.