New exhibit opens February 15 at Sarah Spurgeon Gallery

The Sarah Spurgeon Gallery at Central Washington University will be hosting a two-person exhibition called Mother Tongue over the next month. The exhibit, by Seattle-based artists Rafael Soldi and Victor Yañez-Lazcano, features photo-based media, including photographic prints, video, neon, and installation art.

According to CWU Assistant Professor of Art History Erika Pazian, language shapes identity on personal, familial, community, and national levels. She explains that Soldi and Yañez-Lazcano explore the fluidity of language—specifically Spanish and English—in conjunction with identity formation and immigration. Immigration to the United States from a Spanish-speaking country is an integral part of each artist’s reality: Soldi immigrated from Peru, and Yañez-Lazcano’s family immigrated from Mexico.

Pazian describes how the photo-based practices and personal identities of Soldi and Yañez-Lazcano overlap and diverge; these connections and disparities give viewers of Mother Tongue the opportunity to examine themes such as language, memory, loss, queerness, assimilation, cultural memory, labor, and collective identity.

Soldi is a Peruvian–born artist and independent curator based in Seattle. He holds a BFA in photography and curatorial studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Yañez-Lazcano is an assistant professor of photography at the University of Washington. He received his MFA from Stanford University and his BFA from Columbia College-Chicago.

Mother Tongue will remain on view through March 9. Sarah Spurgeon Gallery is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturdays from 1-5 p.m. The gallery is closed on Sundays and will be closed on February 19 in observation of Presidents’ Day.

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Image 1: Victor Yañez-Lazcano, Spanglish, 2011, Pigment print, 40 in. x 32 in., Edition of 5

Image 2: Rafael Soldi, Imagined Futures, 2016, Thirty-six silver gelatin prints from photo booths, each image 1.5 in. x 1 in.