Amy Solis

Amy and her work photographed with mural by @apexer in downtown Long Beach.

Amy Solis is a maker and activist born in Quito, Ecuador. She is drawn to jewelry’s ability to form a narrative on the body. Her work can exist simultaneously as political statements, decoratives, and functional objects. She unapologetically centers the experiences of her latinx, QTBIPOC, immigrant and activist communities with every piece she makes. Amy has a background in sculpture and craft, acquiring a BFA in Fiber Arts from California State University, Long Beach where her work focused on body identity politics. She is currently continuing her education by working towards her Jewelry Entrepreneurship Certificate at Long Beach City College.

I embrace the idea that jewelry can be used as a symbol of one’s identity. I am a queer, undocumented woman of color living in the U.S. I center my experiences as a form of empowerment, visibility, and representation. Jewelry and what we express with it can be a way to tug at the edges of the normal and center what’s in the margins, normalizing the “other.” My pieces sit at the intersection of jewelry and the language around identity politics. They decentralize cis-white-heteronormativity and question systems and institutions which have oppressed people who exist in the margins.