Sofía Serpa Arango’s first solo show, El Color de Las Cosas Idas (The Colour of Things Past) is a multidisciplinary exploration through painting, porcelain sculpture, scent, and woodwork. Serpa Arango constructs stories in a mythologized Latin America infused with Germanic folk traditions to explore heritage and non-belonging.  Through a process of continuously layering thin washes of highly saturated pigment, the artist captures snapshots of curiously charged emotions: bodies blurring with their backgrounds, skin tones producing unexpected splotches, shadows alluding to unexplained tensions. The artist explores themes of domesticity and the decorative in her porcelain, paraffin and walnut-wood sculptures. Often, these sculptures become vessels or self-aware reliquaries in their own right. Her work takes the viewer on a journey through a rustic history of pilgrimage, anachronistic cowboys and cowgirls, kitschy folk, and petulant children. Serpa Arango is the recipient of the Goldsmiths & Lewisham Arthouse Short Residency and Exhibition award. Serpa Arango’s show will run from September 19th to 29th from 1-6pm Wednesday to Sunday, and by appointment only on Mondays and Tuesdays at Lewisham Art House, 140 Lewisham Way, SE14 6PD, London. The private view will take place on September 18th from 6-9pm.

Text by Sophie Howe

With support from the Exhibitions Hub, Department of Art, Goldsmiths College

Sofía Serpa Arango(b. 2000, Vienna) is a South East London–based artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans painting and sculpture. She graduated with a BFA (Hons) from Goldsmiths, University of London, and her work explores themes of migration and (non)belonging through narrative and storytelling. She recently completed a residency and solo exhibition at Lewisham Arthouse, El color de las cosas idas: The Colour of Things Past. Serpa Arango is the recipient of the 4th Goldsmiths & Lewisham Arthouse Short Residency (2025), was shortlisted for the Freelands Painting Prize (2025), and received the Art Academy London Foundation Trustee Award (2021).