UNION LIBRE

Sol Calero was born in Caracas, Venezuela (1982), and she lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Sol Calero’s colorful, site-specific environments blend an expanded painting practice with the vernacular architecture and cultural codes of Latin America and its diaspora. Her immersive, participatory installations have often taken the form of small businesses such as a hair salon, currency exchange booth, salsa dance school, travel agency, or restaurant, questioning aesthetic hierarchies and problematizing the perception of the exotic while engaging with local contexts. Combining materials and mediums—including furniture, textiles, mosaic, video, mural painting, and functional found objects—her projects delve into the illusion of the Caribbean as a paradise, disarming the viewer with a convivial, playful atmosphere while utilizing a transversal visual language to unfold conversations around migration, displacement, and identity.

Recent solo exhibitions: Museo CA2M, Móstoles (2024); Stavanger Art Museum, Stavanger (2023); 1646, The Hague (2022); Crèvecoeur, Paris (2021); Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen (2020); Villa Arson, Nice (2020); Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2019); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2019) and ChertLüdde, Berlin (2019).
Recent group exhibitions: La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2024); Oku-Noto Triennale, Suzu (2023); Bergen Assembly, Bergen (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki (2022); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2021); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburger (2020) and La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2019), Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2019). Calero was nominated for the Preis der Nationalgalerie in 2017, which included an exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin. She also co-runs a project space in Berlin with Christopher Kline called Kinderhook & Caracas.