Soledad Christie

Soledad Christie is an award-winning ceramic artist who works in San Pedro de Atacama, a town high in the Andes mountains of north-eastern Chile. She hand-builds sculptural vessels that are inspired by the vast, dramatic landscape that has been her home for almost 30 years. Through an ongoing relationship with clay, Soledad’s work is meant to express the intuitions and sensations that are constantly present when inhabiting the Atacama Desert and Altiplano territory and its outstanding atmosphere. The territory has become part of Soledad’s own identity; the silence, solitude and vastness have had an immense impact on herself and her work, which is deeply rooted in the ancestral local pre-Columbian monochrome pottery tradition, and its ancient shaping, burnishing and firing processes.

When Soledad Christie first moved to San Pedro de Atacama she was fascinated by the collection of black burnished pre-Columbian pottery in the Museum of San Pedro de Atacama. The pottery’s great strength and extreme delicacy, so simple in design and at the same time so full of mystery, left a deep, lasting impression on her. This, along with the small fragments of ancient red and black vessels Soledad finds while walking in the desert, inspires her tactile sculptural vessels.

The Artisan: a crafted tea room Exhibition