A beautiful young woman facing calmly to our right, looks ahead with dark almond eyes as straight bangs curve across her forehead. Her features are softly modeled, emerging from a luminous field of blue-violet. From her head, lavish, roped waves of hair envelop her body like a cone. Threaded through the locks are countless fine, pale leaflets and beadlike specks like seeds that glint against the cool monochrome. No clothing is visible as her hair gathers and folds like a shawl, suggesting both warmth and weight. The background is a smooth gradient from indigo to orchid for a still, devotional composition. The overall effect is quiet, protective, and intensely focused on surface via glossy strands, delicate leaves, and a tender, private gaze. Filipino–Canadian artist Florence Solis names this work for makahiya (Mimosa pudica), whose leaflets fold at a touch like an image of shyness that doubles as strategy. Her protagonists are modern icons built from digital collages, then translated into saturated acrylics, where hair, veils, and woven textures act as armor and constraint. She draws on Filipino folklore and craft, especially the delicacy and resilience of piña weaving, to think about the structures that shape women’s lives: “Threads bind, but they also connect.” In Solis’s words, “Filipino women, much like the makahiya, have been taught to yield, to soften, to take up less space,” yet “beneath this quietness lies an undeniable force … that persists, adapts, and reclaims space.” The interlaced hair hints at touch-sensitivity and vigilance; the single-color glow reads like moonlight on water. Shown with “The Mission Projects” at EXPO CHICAGO, “Makahiya VI” holds the paradox at the heart of her practice of vulnerability poised as power to ask whether these bindings are sanctuary, confinement, or the luminous seam where self-possession is made visible.
“Makahiya VI” by Florence Solis (Filipino–Canadian) - Acrylic on canvas / 2025 - EXPO CHICAGO, Navy Pier (Chicago, Illinois) #WomenInArt #WomanArtist #WomenPaintingWomen #WomensArt #art #artText #artwork #FlorenceSolis #Solis #ExpoChicago #MissionProjects #AcrylicArt #FilipinoArtist #CanadianArtist
