Artist Manuela Solano creates her paintings through an innovative tactile method, using precisely placed nails, tape, and pipe cleaners to guide her brush across the canvas. The 26-year-old artist, who lost her sight due to medical malpractice during HIV treatments, has developed an intuitive approach that combines memory and imagination to produce compelling works of art. Working alongside her team, Solano marks specific areas on her canvases and feels her way through each composition, allowing desired imagery to emerge organically through this collaborative process.
"I try to force myself to keep [the shapes] faster and looser, which feels great," Solano explains. "It makes the process more playful." Her artistic philosophy centers on personal expression and self-reflection. "My work is always, on some level, about myself. I make work about either my taste, my yearnings, or something I see of myself in someone else," she says. This deeply personal approach has remained consistent throughout her career, even as her methods have evolved dramatically since losing her sight in 2014.
A documentary film by Barbara Anastacio for T Magazine, created in 2018 before Solano's gender transition, provides intimate insight into her artistic process and studio practice in Mexico City. The film shows Solano reviewing her earlier works created before her vision loss, revealing a clear visual connection between her past and present creations. Her sketchbooks from art school feature snowy landscapes and portraits that continue to influence her current paintings, demonstrating the enduring power of visual memory in her artistic development.
Solano's recent works, including "Walking on Water," maintain the expansive landscape qualities of her earlier pieces while exploring new textural possibilities. Ripples pulse across painted sea surfaces, showcasing her team's ongoing experimentation with different painting techniques. "Me and my team are constantly figuring out the best way to paint textures or effects we haven't painted before. In that way, we are continually learning," she notes. This collaborative learning process has become integral to her artistic evolution and continues to push the boundaries of what's possible in her work.
Her solo exhibition "Egogénesis," held earlier this year in Madrid, featured a powerful collection of self-portraits that explore themes of identity, gender fluidity, and the relationship between humans and nature. These tender portraits reflect Solano's complex personal journey, with environmental elements appearing to imprint themselves onto the human figures she creates. The exhibition demonstrated her ability to translate internal experiences and evolving identity into visual form, despite the challenges of working without sight.
Solano actively challenges misconceptions about her creative process, particularly the assumption that her work relies solely on visual memory. "I've heard that memories change every time we revisit them," she explains. "This means everybody faces the problem of remembering things a different way than they actually look." She emphasizes that memory-based creation isn't unique to her circumstances as a blind artist, but rather a universal aspect of how all artists work with recalled imagery and experiences.
Since relocating to Berlin, Solano has incorporated new daily experiences and dreams into her artistic practice, creating compositions that blend past imagery with present-day inspiration. Her recent works, including "Orlando" (2025), "Dinosaurio" (2025), and "Cowboy" (2025), each measuring 215 x 215 centimeters and executed in acrylic on canvas, demonstrate this synthesis of memory and immediate experience. "Nowadays, I am making a lot of work about my current comings and goings, all of it things I obviously have never seen," she explains.
The artist directly addresses ableist assumptions about her work's limitations, stating: "I think there is a common misinterpretation that my work is perhaps about memory, that I am painting the things I saw. And this often comes with the rather ableist worry that someday I might run out of memories to paint. But this is not the case at all. I am originating new images and putting them in my work all the time." This statement underscores her commitment to innovation and growth as an artist, regardless of her visual impairment.
Beyond painting, Solano works as a writer, creating poems and stories that accompany her visual works. She recently completed what she describes as a "manifesto" to accompany her new "Blind Transgender and Wild" series, demonstrating her multidisciplinary approach to artistic expression. This integration of written and visual elements adds another layer of meaning to her already complex body of work.
Viewers in Mexico City can currently see Solano's pop-culture influenced works at Museo Tamayo through January 4, before the exhibition travels to CAAC Sevilla in 2026. Her ongoing artistic journey continues to challenge conventional notions about disability, creativity, and the sources of artistic inspiration, proving that innovation and adaptation can lead to profound artistic breakthroughs.
