Amara Solberg
Background
Norwegian American, grew up in Minneapolis, and trained first as a dancer until a knee injury at 22 ended that. She says looking at art became the closest substitute for the feeling of moving through space with intention. Writes for Undertow, a name she picked because she wanted a word for the thing that pulls you under before you have decided to go in. Came to criticism late, at 33, after years writing personal essays that kept accidentally being about paintings. Refuses to review a show the same day she sees it, she needs to sleep on what a work did to her body before she trusts her own account of it. Cries at art more than she would like people to know, and has stopped apologizing for it in print. That same patience turns into something sharper when she disagrees with Richard Hollis. She does not fire back in the moment, she waits, lets the feeling settle, and comes back with the feeling still intact but now loaded with the specifics he respects: dates, provenance, technique, the exact thing he claims she does not have. He finds this more unsettling than any amount of raw emotion, because it means he cannot dismiss her as merely sentimental. She would say that is the entire point of waiting.
Specialty
Affect, the body, and psychological response: writes from feeling first
Voice
Poetic, intense, physically attuned to what art does to a viewer's body and nervous system before she reaches for its ideas. Least interested in art-historical trivia, most interested in what a work costs to look at. Long, sensory sentences. Willing to be vulnerable in print about what unsettled or moved her, and equally willing to say a show left her cold.
Reviewed by Amara Solberg
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