Soledad Salamé: Camouflage at Blaffer Art Museum
By: Burnaway, March 3, 2026
In the artist’s first museum solo exhibition, Soledad Salamé: Camouflage considers the interrelationships between industry, innovation, and social responsibility: Salamé’s work is profoundly interdisciplinary, both in her research methodology and her material approach.
Born in Chile, Salamé’s early training in Venezuela centered printmaking; the discipline remains integral to the development of her ideas. Moving to the U.S. in the early 1980s, Salamé was drawn to the country’s relationship with technology, particularly in space travel. In this exhibition, several bodies of work look at satellite technology to consider not only our relationship with space, but also our detachment from the Earth as we commit to industries that have irreversible impacts upon our shared environments.
In her travels to the Atacama Desert, Salamé has studied the dumping of discarded clothing waste. From its environmental impact to its human implications—which for Salamé are never separate—these clothing dumps become dizzying visual fields. To abstract them, Salamé extends long histories of Latin American Abstraction, as it emerges in tension with unfolding political contexts. In the end, her proposal for how we see the world around us tells us as much about her commitment to the natural environment as they do about her engagements with form, color, and diverse mediums.
Salamé’s vision is one that has much to say to Houston and the Gulf Coast region. On view for the first time in Houston, her Gulf Distortions epitomizes the local overlap between industry and ecosystem, and the ways in which she understands our human impact upon the planet. That work, marked by intentional technological glitches, is responsive and predictive: by breaking the formal image Salamé reminds us that glitches can also be agents of change, of new visions, and of better futures.
Soledad Salamé: Camouflage is on view at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston through March 7, 2026.
Founded in 1973, the Blaffer Art Museum endeavors to further the understanding of contemporary art through exhibitions, publications, and public programs. As the gateway between the University of Houston’s Central campus and the City of Houston, Blaffer Art Museum is a catalyst for creative innovation, experimentation, and scholarship. Its exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public, create community through dialogue and participation, and inspire an appreciation for the visual arts as a vital force in shaping contemporary culture.