Looking Left and Right
Sol Fernandez
6
July 2021
6
July
2021
19
November 2021
Gallery 3
When my daughter was born, I did autopilot activities.Packing snacks into tin lunchboxes and shoving almost empty packs of baby wipes into the pocket behind the passenger seat of my car. It’s welcomed there by scrunched up receipts that never made it to the bin and other badly folded important documents I’ve been ignoring. Auto pilot looks like baggy jeans, a dirty fleece jacket, wearing house shoes everywhere and not ever being fully on top of things.The version of myself pre-pregnancy was still figuring themselves out. Sometime’s the only thing that reminds me of who I am is a letter I got from someone close to me, specifically this line ‘you’d be a milf at any age’.I’m a twenty two year old mother and I make paintings with my two year old daughter. I make works about how I feel; about myself, about other people, about the past, present, future and about the confusions and contradictions of life & how they sit within me. I make works with the extension of me, right next to me. My daughter, from what I know, makes works about how she feels and who she is. She is also processing life.Looking Left and Right is constant as a mother. Scanning every room and situation, planning every routine, looking back at where you’ve got it right or wrong and figuring out what it means to be a mother. It’s about introspection and reflection of life pre and post pregnancy and navigating motherhood and self, trying to escape autopilot mode.
Exhibition documented by Aaron Rees.
When my daughter was born, I did autopilot activities.Packing snacks into tin lunchboxes and shoving almost empty packs of baby wipes into the pocket behind the passenger seat of my car. It’s welcomed there by scrunched up receipts that never made it to the bin and other badly folded important documents I’ve been ignoring. Auto pilot looks like baggy jeans, a dirty fleece jacket, wearing house shoes everywhere and not ever being fully on top of things.The version of myself pre-pregnancy was still figuring themselves out. Sometime’s the only thing that reminds me of who I am is a letter I got from someone close to me, specifically this line ‘you’d be a milf at any age’.I’m a twenty two year old mother and I make paintings with my two year old daughter. I make works about how I feel; about myself, about other people, about the past, present, future and about the confusions and contradictions of life & how they sit within me. I make works with the extension of me, right next to me. My daughter, from what I know, makes works about how she feels and who she is. She is also processing life.Looking Left and Right is constant as a mother. Scanning every room and situation, planning every routine, looking back at where you’ve got it right or wrong and figuring out what it means to be a mother. It’s about introspection and reflection of life pre and post pregnancy and navigating motherhood and self, trying to escape autopilot mode.
Sol Fernandez
Sol Fernandez is a South Asian multidisciplinary storyteller and maker, whose work engages with cultural liminality, identity, and the complexities of age, relationships, and sexuality. As Artistic Director of Way Over There Collective, Sol prioritises the voices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities in South East Naarm (Melbourne). Her artistic practice, which often involves collaboration with her daughter Blu Fernandez Lennon, is deeply connected to the process of personal and cultural reclamation. Sol’s work challenges traditional narratives, seeking honest and layered representation while navigating the fluidity of identity and experience.