Metamorphosis of Failure
Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY | January 12–February 24, 2019
For her film and photography project Metamorphosis of Failure, Mozman Solano takes as a point of departure the Museum of Modern Art’s 2014 exhibition of Paul Gauguin’s works on paper that he made in the South Pacific toward the end of his life. Mozman Solano was impressed by the mythology perpetuated by the museumography and curation of the exhibition, particularly the narrative about Gauguin’s work based on identity transformation during his immersion in Polynesian culture. Rather than rehashing this account, Mozman Solano instead explores the history of Gauguin’s mixed background (French and Peruvian). The work probes Gauguin’s obsession with racial purity, which she speculates may have stemmed from his multiethnic identity and created a conflicted sense of self. Mozman Solano’s film is based on fantasies of Gauguin’s five-week stay in Panama before his journey to Polynesia. The story satirically examines his search for subjects, “primitive” life, and “pure” racial identity as described in letters to his wife and his book Noa Noa, within a diverse Caribbean topography. In her project, Mozman Solano playfully reimagines the stories of the women who were Gauguin’s muses. She cleverly empowers these women by imagining an alternative narrative that exposes Gauguin’s internal conflict and the desires that he projected onto his subjects.