Please, Wear My Red Shoes

By artist Silvana Soriano

Explore a rich survey of texture, color, and curiosity that brings classic fairytale and folklore stories to life through collage, printmaking, and embroidery. For more information, please contact the branch at (305) 535-4219 or capleyb@mdpls.org. All Ages.

Artist Silvana Soriano’s multimedia practice is a rich survey of texture, color, and curiosity. Her commitment to education through art — as a practitioner, teacher, and student — embodies the sharp and thoughtful qualities of her body of work. There is a natural and joyful attention to detail that reflects both the time it takes to complete each piece and the decadent pool of references, such as art, literature, language, and history, that she keeps close to her heart.

Soriano’s printmaking is elegant and haunting, leaving viewers to explore its context on their own terms. Her collages are vibrant, expansive, and methodical — each carefully constructed to reflect a remarkable sense of humor. Her embroidery, often symbolic, is mischievous and minimal.

Within each realm of her practice is a spirited reminder that art is more about the human experience than social commentary. Similar to fairytales and folk stories, art is about the future and those who will inhabit it. These stories aren’t simply about morality or precautions; their purpose is to teach us that no matter how fantastical the characters, settings, or conditions may be, or how old we are, their lessons remain relevant.

Fairytales and folktales contain magical seedlings of truth about the world we live in and those we share it with, but they aren’t meant to invite fear into our lives either. In addition to cautioning us about the dangers of pride, defiance, selfishness, or a bad attitude, they function as guides to participating in our cultures. More importantly, these storytelling traditions are living archives of what matters to a society throughout time. These stories and the ideas within them endure because the human imagination endures. Concepts such as curiosity, collaboration, empathy, kindness, justice, and humility are as vital to our history as conflict, loneliness, resistance, and survival.

Soriano’s playful versatility lends itself to this investigation of Indigenous and Western tales — of human desire, the notion of destiny, the consequences of one’s decisions, or finding safety. She invites young women, as stewards of our future, to take part in site-specific reinterpretations of stories such as The Red Shoes (Hans Christian Andersen, 1845), Sealskin, Soulskin (Inuit tale), Little Red Riding Hood (Charles Perrault, 1697), and the artist’s own interpretation of Joseph Campbell’s description of archaeological discoveries made in the ancient city of Ur in The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (1959). By welcoming them into this activation and granting them the agency, Soriano captures the essence of art-making as a channel for education, collective understanding, and magic.

This collection of work brings old-fashioned and otherworldly ideas to life through collage, printmaking, and embroidery — a genre-defying exploration of why we make art, for whom we make it, and how we keep it alive. Please, Wear My Red Shoes is an imaginative discovery of connection and understanding that honors the history of oral traditions that cultivate the creative seeds that shape our shared humanity.

Curatorial Statement by Maria Gabriela Di Giammarco

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