Born in Los Angeles, CA, Soto grew up in New York City and in Spain. Her Caribbean heritage and continuous movements between continents and islands have informed her themes, providing her a unique, global perspective. The motifs of transculturalism and diminishing borders resonate throughout her art. Soto has been invited to residencies, received commissions and has exhibited her work in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean.
“My installations and sculptures are meant to engage the viewer in a reconsideration of what they know about the world in which they live. They’re meant to encourage thinking about the space that the viewer inhabits, be it physical (local, regional, national, global, galactic), cultural, emotional, or intellectual. The installations require literal navigation; they require the viewers to physically reorient themselves in a foreign, highly detailed, and nuanced environment. Though the sculptures are also highly detailed and nuanced, they require more of a protracted visual reorientation. Both the installations and sculptures are meant to attune the viewer to the exploration of spatial ambiguity.
I call my installations and sculptures “drawings in space” and “wire drawings” because they reconfigure world and star maps in order to reinvent landscapes that communicate extremes of the macro and micro worlds that serve as arenas for a human story. The imagery refers to, variously, the Big Bang Theory, the Earth’s ecosystem, the World Wide Web, cellular waves of communication, and human and tectonic migration.
I base my aesthetic on a tension poised between fragility and strength, interactions and disconnections, and ancient and future cultures. Construction and deconstruction, via cutting, sewing, twisting, and layering, is a critical aspect of my process and informs my works’ themes. These themes include personal relationships, family interactions, social structures, and the commerce of ideas and global cultures.
My materials include Mylar, graphite, pigments, thread, hardware, and wire. These materials interest me because their physicality and referential quality is neutral and malleable, thus minimizing associations with the material, the better to focus on the experiences the compositions create.”
Lisa C Soto
2013