In Her Biggest Show Yet, Artist Manuela Solano Goes All-In on Pop Icons

Vogue: What was the impetus behind the title of the show, “Alien Queen / Paraíso Extraño”?

Manuela Solano: The Alien films have been almost sacred to me since I was a little kid, so I decided to make a portrait of the Alien Queen. I was kind of stuck on those two words, and also “paraíso extraño,” which appears in a song by the Spanish pop singer Mónica Naranjo. “Alien Queen” conveys something that is other than us, but it’s also majestic and powerful, and “paraíso extraño” [“strange paradise” in English] is a place or an experience, perhaps a state of being that is also strange, but nonetheless paradisiac. But now that it’s finished and about to open, I would say this show is mostly about my exuberance and my joy, and also my drive and my brio and my lust for life and my libido—the life in me. But the show is about many other things. These [paintings] are all characters from pop culture, and as such, they speak to those traits in all of us, not just me.

Are these pop culture figures that you grew up with or had special connections to?

Half and half. A lot of them were very special to me as a little kid, like Karen O. The last painting we finished for this show was Karen O’s Hands or Maps. As a teenager, I was very into the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I saw them live in Mexico City in 2005, and back then I kept making little drawings of her in my notebooks. And then there was an open call for fans to design a flag, and I sent one in, and it was included in the booklet for their second album. Then a few months after that, it was my first semester in college, and for an assignment for a digital-illustration class I designed a box for a cereal named Karen O’s. I took a photo and sent it to this email address I found on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ website. I wasn’t thinking it would actually come to anything, but a couple weeks later, I got an email from the band’s PR person saying that Karen O loved it, and she wanted my permission to put it up on her blog. And obviously as an 18-year-old studying art and a fan, it felt like such a big moment for me, knowing that my art could bridge gaps. Now, 20 years later, that painting crystalizes a lot of that impulse.