Sofía Salazar Rosales, a sculptor and installation artist who lives in Amsterdam, explores a range of unexpected forms and materials, many of them referring to her Ecuadorian roots. She’s known for her “material-poetic” practice, often infused with sociopolitical content. In “Imagínate vivir en Suiza y perderte esto” (“Imagine living in Switzerland and missing out on this”), currently on view at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland, she presents a playful take on the contrasting perspectives of Switzerland and Latin America through a diverse range of unexpected materials and forms.
Robert Preece: You work with a wide range of materials. Why is this? What are you using in your current exhibition?
Sofía Salazar Rosales: I believe materials tell stories, either through their own history or through what they evoke in us. So, depending on what I want to express, playing with a wide range of materials allows me to alternate my gestures of construction and to have multiple relationships with the material—tactile variations, distance (for safety, for example), scent, and texture.
I like to divide my materials into different categories—sometimes a single one fits into several categories. For this show, I’m interested first in the structural, which includes plaster bandages, fabric, iron, cardboard, flax tow, fiberglass, polyester resin, and vinyl glue. Costume includes charcoal, glass powder, asphalt, flax tow, filler, paraffin, silicone, and spray paint. Third, there is insulating, with iron and iron powder. Fourth, protective, with stone, wooden beads, glass beads, and bells. And finally, contextual, with wooden beads, tears, and epoxy. In the past, I’ve also used sugar, cocoa butter, gauze, cement, copper, bronze, chicken wire, and clay.
RP: Could you explain the title of your current exhibition?
SSR: It’s a phrase from a meme, “Imagínate vivir en Suiza y perderte esto,” which translates as “Imagine living in Switzerland and missing out on this.” On social media, it accompanies images of situations in Latin America where events we couldn’t imagine happening, actually happen. These are everyday situations, humorous, full of emotion, though many times they also evoke complicated contexts.
The phrase highlights that you are missing out on this because you live in Switzerland, which speaks less about the specific country and more about the image of an organized place, the kind of country one migrates to—so this phrase is addressed to those who left Latin America. All of my work is about displacement, specifically about products, objects that have the potential to reveal political, social, and economic contexts linked to human displacement, to migratory flows.
Many of the objects in the exhibition are forms of construction or elements of nature that are not present in Switzerland, or if they are, there is an explanation for their presence, like palm trees, for example. My work is a back-and-forth between the here (understood as European) and the there (Latin American, in my case Ecuadorian or Cuban) from a sociopolitical and economic perspective.
RP: Could you explain a bit about Ellas piden enraizarse (They seek to set roots) (2022)?
SSR: This was a first attempt at roots, which I made for my exhibition “Hay cuerpos cansados por el viaje que buscan enraizarse” (“There are bodies tired from the journey that seek to root”). This sentence, which I wrote, has guided my work since then. With the sculpture, I imagined that some tire inner tubes had “walked” so much that they became the path they had traveled—this is why I used asphalt, which emphasizes the evocation of weight. “They” become an object that can no longer move, despite its circular shape, which suggests movement. They try to build a column from which a representation of steel reinforcement blooms, where the rods are rendered in silicone; unlike metal, their original material, they are very flexible. I was inspired by the rods that extend from the tops of certain unfinished buildings, either because there wasn’t enough money to complete them or because it’s believed the family will grow. In Guayaquil, Ecuador, these are called “varillas de la esperanza” (“rods of hope”).
The column of inner tubes measures 157 centimeters high, like me, and it was my first black sculpture. I was also inspired by a common Cuban expression that my dad told me after one of his trips to Cuba: his skin from the sun was black like tar (chapapote).
RP: How did you decide on the forms and materials for When the axial skeleton decides to speak & We are contextual and sentimental (2024), another black sculpture that resembles a twisted horizontal beam, and the slumping, turquoise-colored When the axial skeleton decides to speak (2024)?
SSR: When the axial skeleton decides to speak & We are contextual and sentimental was part of an installation of three black sculptures, where the guiding phrase was “in the thirst for reconciliation we find homogenization.” It was an urgent gesture, symbolized by the uniformity of the materials—broken glass, charcoal, and iron dust. It represents an IPN beam, a symbol of modernity, and includes three agricultural sacks, with no recognizable brand or product names, unlike previous pieces. It synthesizes my interest in the relationship between modernity, construction materials, and Latin American agro-exportation.
When the axial skeleton decides to speak greeted visitors at the entrance to a previous exhibition about ghostly being. The IPN beams in concrete buildings are the hidden ghosts of industrialized spaces. I imagined this beam as tired, hence its curved position, covered in broken glass (a type specifically used as an abrasive for cleaning pools) and carrying fragility. The final gesture was a necklace with a seed, the same one I carried for protection, now partially covered in bronze dust, transforming it into a small monument.
RP: There are two versions of Escuchando sin tener que traducir más que en formas (roughly Listening without having to translate anything other than in forms) (2025) installed in the same space. Is this a deliberate decision to generate a comparison or contrast in form? Why are they installed on a rust-colored floor (Dance floor 1 [2025])?
SSR: I consider each exhibition as a field of experimentation, not as an end. The two sculptures—they are representations of leaves—are attempts. In one, I needed time to understand; I carefully cut, then slowly rolled and glued the flax tow; while in the other, the structure is visible, and the tow covers it in certain places. One is suspended, resting, like a dry leaf, and the other touches the floor, closer to us, becoming another body.
The floor I made is an insulator for my sculptures, a place that, through the color of rust, speaks of the passing of time. It’s simply a gesture of “accompanying,” of holding these sculptures—all of which I imagined as floating, fragile—in a different way. And if you get close, you can glimpse drawings of the sculptures that are present.
RP: What is Ellas piden quedarse (They ask to stay) (2025) about?
SSR: Ellas piden quedarse is from a series that I began in 2019. I was amazed by the color and condition of bananas in France—yellow, green, perfect, refrigerated. They reveal nothing of the historical weight they carry. In the first series, I was interested in representing bananas as tired, worn out, cast in cement to strip them of their commercial image; in this sculpture, they are made with plaster bandages covered in paraffin, as if frozen or fossilized. A net woven with wooden beads holds and protects them, contrasting with industrial packaging, and blue and white chains call for protection from Yemayá, the goddess of the sea. The piece plays with oppositions that evoke the paradoxes of modern systems of commercial and cultural flow.
RP: What idea was behind the hanging metal piece Fue a lo mejor la impaciencia de tanto esperar tu llegada, mas no sé, no sé decirte como fue (2025)?
SSR: This sculpture is a reproduction of an earring that my mom made when she lived in China and had just met my dad. She later gave it to me as a symbol of protection when I moved to France at the age of 18. In the exhibition, it guards the space and other sculptures. For me, this earring represents a witness to my parents’ meeting. My mom’s earrings were inspired by pre-Columbian shapes; this one, however, carries symbolism belonging to my Cuban dad, shown by the red and black colors—Elegguá, the one who opens the paths.
RP: What was it like planning the installation of this show? Did it take a long time to get it where you wanted it?
SSR: I had to draw quite a bit, more than usual, although it was simpler than before because I felt a connection with the space and the team. I had a very free production moment, and that helped a lot. In any case, to answer simply—and hopefully, this applies to all future projects—it was always thrilling, with fear and excitement, and a thirst for play. Every installation is an adventure, with tears and surprises.
“Imagínate vivir en Suiza y perderte esto” is on view at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, in St. Gallen, Switzerland, through May 18, 2025.
