Shizu Saldamando is an American visual artist, who, through intimate and provocative paintings, drawings and video, presents a contemporary take on portraiture, that explores and challenges the constructs of identity. Saldamando also creates installation and performance art.
Background
Ethnicity:
Saldamando was born to parents of a Mexican-American and Japanese-American descent.
Shizu Saldamando was born in 1978, in San Francisco, California, United States. She grew up in the Mission district of San Francisco, where she was exposed at a young age to the gallery scene.
Education
In 2000, Shizu received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. Later, in 2005, she attained a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts.
Career
During her career, Shizu Saldamando took part in numerous group exhibitions, including "Back to the Future", California State University, Dominguez Hills University Art Gallery, Carson, California (2000), "Substance of Choice", Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco, California (2002), "Mexicanidad", National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, Illinois (2003), "The Bumper Sticker Show", Ruben Ochoa’s Mobile Class C Gallery, Los Angeles, California (2004), "Supersonic", Los Angeles Design Center, Los Angeles, California (2005), "Tigers and Jaguars", The Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, California (2006), "Exquisite Acts and Everyday Rebellions", California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California (2007), "Drawing the Line", Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California (2008), "Backyard", Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles, California (2009), "Seeing is Becoming", Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis, Indiana (2010), "Nanchayette", Gallery Lara, Tokyo, Japan (2011), "Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter", National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2011), "Super Awesome", Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, California (2014), "Observations", Long Beach City College Art Gallery, California (2016), "Day of the Dead: Tilica y Flaca es la Calaca", Mexican Fine Arts Museum, Chicago, Illinois (2017), "Construyendo Puentes", Museo de Arte Carillo Gil, Mexico City (2018), and others.
She held many solo exhibitions, including "Shizu Saldamando", Lime Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California (2004), "Shizu Saldamando", Pasadena City College, Walter Shatford Library, Pasadena, California (2007), "Stay Gold", Space 47, San Jose, California (2009), "All Tomorrow’s Parties", Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2012), "Ouroboros", South of Sunset Gallery, Los Angeles, California (2014), "To Return", Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, California (2018), among others.
Also, her work was shown in "We Must Risk Delight: Twenty Artists from Los Angeles", curated by Elizabeta Betinski as an official collateral exhibition of the 56th Venice Biennale.
In addition, Shizu was an artist-in-residence at the Art Omi International Artist Colony in New York in 2002, as well as at Can Serrat, International Arts Residence in Spain, in 2011.
Currently, the artist lives and works in Los Angeles.
Views
Shizu works from informal snapshots of friends and family, focusing on often-overlooked communities of color: punks, queers, activists and artists. Challenging the traditional conventions of wealth and prestige in portraiture, Saldamando presents work, that allows the underground crowd to see themselves reflected and affirmed in contemporary culture, while making them visible to new audiences.
Her technique could be described as a remix of traditional painting, on canvas and Japanese washi paper, with pop culture materials, such as sticker paper, handkerchiefs and ballpoint pens. By using these materials, such as glitter, origami paper, ballpoint pen, bed sheets, handkerchiefs, ruled notebook paper and plywood, Saldamando mimics the sundry styles of the people she chooses to represent. The use of origami paper, integrated with prism and scrapbook paper, point to a perceived ethnic or cultural context, but the juxtaposition of these materials dislodges and confuses any cultural generalizations. Her use of ballpoint pen similarly references both smart Latino Low-Rider art and the doodling of an office or academic environment.
Quotations:
"A lot of what I try to capture are different subcultures or scenes, in which people have created their own world outside of larger alienating constructs."
"My friends and I would buy Teen Angels, a magazine of lowrider and cholo art, and try to copy the drawings of Aztec pyramids and warriors and naked girls. I think that's how I got good at ballpoint pen renderings."
"Growing up in the Mission district in San Francisco, it was predominantly a hip-hop culture. Here in Los Angeles, I'd go to shows or house parties, and it would be all Latino kids listening to the Cure and the Smiths. In L.A., I felt normal for the first time."