Diana Solís: Encuentros
Photographs of Chicago Poetry Communities, 1978–1994

Diana Solís: Encuentros presents photographs by queer Mexicana Chicana feminist artist Diana Solís, documenting poetry communities in Chicago—including the Guild Complex, La Decima Musa, Weeds, and Hothouse—throughout the 1970s–1990s. Curated with Oscar Arriola and Nicole Marroquin, this exhibition features books, photographs, and ephemera that explore this unique moment in Chicago’s literary history, illuminating the legacy of Solís’s life in arts and literature.

Diana Solís is a Mexican-born visual artist, photographer, and educator whose work includes painting, illustration, printmaking, comics, public murals, and installation. She is inspired by Mexican and Chicano culture, memory, cautionary tales, oral and personal histories, queer identities, and narratives. Her work examines notions of place, identity, and belonging. Central to Solís’s practice is her commitment to being a teaching artist who collaborates with youth, immigrant families, and adults, and supports them in creating art.

As a teaching artist of four decades, Solís has taught students in a wide range of settings including community organizations, public schools, museums, and special residency programs. She holds a BFA in Photography from the University of Illinois Chicago and has exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally at the National Museum of Mexican Art; DePaul Art Museum; Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares, Toluca, Mexico; and Centre Cívic Barceloneta, Barcelona, Spain. Solís’s photography book, Luz: Seeing the Space Between Us will be published in November 2022 by Flatlands Press.  
Her upcoming exhibitions include Images on Which to Build, which will travel to the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio in 2022, and the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art in New York City in 2023.

Oscar Arriola is a Chicago-born curator, street photographer, and zine collector. He is a co-director of ZINEmercado zine fest and the Foto Mercado photography festival and organizes roving Stick-Up Chicago drawing meetups around the city. He has exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center, Galerie F, the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, and SAIC's Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection.

Nicole Marroquin is a teacher educator and artist who explores youth resistance movements, belonging and spatial justice by uncovering and re-presenting recent histories of Black and Latinx Chicagoans. She has presented projects at the American Association of Research Librarians Annual Conference, Kochi Biennale, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, Gallery 400, Midwest Archivist Conference, Northwestern University and the DePaul Museum of Art. She is a 2022 United States Artist Fellowship recipient, a member of the Chicago ACT and Justseeds collectives, and faculty at SAIC.

The exhibition opening will be on Thursday, October 20, from 5-7 PM. Additionally, there will be a panel with the artist and curators on Thursday, December 1, from 7-8 PM.