El eterno insomnio, 2025

El eterno insomnio, 2025, Bells, stone, glass beads, and iron, 134 × 32.5 × 46 cm

Sofía Salazar Rosales frequently reconstructs objects rooted in her home and surroundings, giving emotional weight to physical forms and organic shapes using texture, structure, and visual metaphor to make the unseen felt.

Her work El Eterno Insomnio (The Eternal Insomnia) reimagines the machete—an object historically tied to both labor and resistance, especially in places like Cuba, where it became a symbol of anti-colonial struggle among enslaved Africans—by outlining its form entirely with clusters of small bells. These bells, evocative of ritual and spiritual artifacts, transform the machete into a delicate, sonorous object, intensifying the interplay between the sacred, the organic, craft and resistance. In this work, the handle is made with selenite stone, which has beaded details. The work itself is attached to iron forged to resemble a belt.