Mémoires Voyageuses
Curated by Ines Goldbach
Kunsthaus Baselland, Münchenstein/Basel
22 May – 16 August 2026

How do we consume Latin America—through architecture, food, or agricultural products like bananas? What can we learn from the stories, gestures, and materials that we adopt and perpetuate about other countries? Sofía Salazar Rosales, whose parents are from Ecuador and Cuba—and who herself left Ecuador at the age of eighteen to move to France— positions these questions at the center of her emerging body of work, which could not be more multifaceted or profound. It is shaped by collective and personal memories and experiences in Latin America, but also by encounters and events in places where she studied or spent extended periods, such as Amsterdam, Lyon, and Paris.

At the Kunsthaus, the now Paris-based artist guides visitors through a series of structures, gestures, and sculptures that evoke precious or durable materials, though they themselves are nothing of the sort. As they move through these spaces and structures, visitors can sense their great poetry as well as the appreciation that the artist extends not only to these simple materials, but particularly to the history of their origins, which is often marked by migration, displacement, the colonial past, loss, and longing.

Made from found cardboard, some of these delicate, fragile structures are several meters tall; they are reminiscent of gates or painted metal grilles, which are ubiquitous in many Latin American cities—including in Cuba, which the artist recently visited. These gates separate the private from the public, representing protection for some and exclusion and boundaries for others. “These gates were a perfect example of my work,” explains the artist in an interview. “Even fear needs to be beautiful.” Salazar Rosales is interested in the parallels between the agricultural export of basic raw materials and the way cities and their development evolve in response to the economic success of certain products. While at school in Ecuador, she learned about World War I and World War II, but everything was taught in the context of agricultural exports. “We learned history through the products we depend on and the stories that are told.”

The artist’s longing for the elusive is captured perfectly here: something that emanates from the stillness of the objects, evolves as we move around them, and through our interrogation can become more beautiful, reveal its origins, and offer greater insight. After all, reproducing stories and objects in different materials also means retelling these stories in new and different ways: inclusion rather than exclusion, fragility rather than immutability, the reformulation of existing modes of thinking and connotations, and above all new freedoms and liberties. Sofía Salazar Rosales further emphasizes that art is about creating connections and interweaving the past and present in order to produce something new and meaningful.

Photo by Gina Folly