ShizuSaldamando

SHIZU SALDAMANDO
by Diana McClure
Art Asia Pacific Magazine, Issue 41

Have we finally reached a place in American culture where our gaze has no fundamental relationship to a dominant “white” culture? If not, Shizu Saldamando is on her way.

This is what mainstream art institutions – both the gallery and the graduate art school – are confronted with in the paintings and video work of Saldamando (particularly, CalArts where she will receive a Master’s degree in 2005).

Saldamando’s most recent work, Art Student, consists of a 30-minute video piece that will be accompanied by a series of portrait paintings. Art Student situates 5 students of color from Cal Arts in 5 chairs against a stark white wall under fluorescent lighting. The video, filmed for 15 minutes and then looped, is meant to run the duration of an art school classroom critique.

Charles Gaines of CalArts in discussions with Saldamando has commented that the piece calls into question how loaded any subject is that isn’t white. People often assume that non-white subjects are inherently political when in reality the only concrete assumption that can be made is that of the viewer’s subjectivity.

Saldamando has exhibited across the United States in both galleries and museums and was a resident at the Art Omi International Artist Colony in 2002. Portrait painting is her forte. As an undergraduate at UCLA she was one of only a few students interested in portraiture. Her willingness to go against the grain may reference her experience as a youth growing up around Chicano activism and art in San Francisco—namely Studio 24, Galleria de la Raza and the Mission Cultural Center.

Saldamando’s process begins with photos taken by her, of friends and acquaintances. In a series shown at Ethan Cohen Gallery’s “Re-Do China” exhibition (2003) Calendar Girls #1, #2, #3, her detailed portraits belie a profound power and stoicism. In her words, “The work is a reinterpretation of vintage Chinese tourist art, specifically Chinese calendar advertisements of the 1920’s.”During her artist talk at the exhibition the work ignited a heated debate around topics of sex, exoticization and commodity.

Saldamando’s portraiture often imbues its subjects with an agency that demands the viewer meet them halfway. There is a certain “post-gaze” quality which simultaneously does not invite or exclude the audience. It is evident in her portraits that she and her subjects are privy to the inner workings of each others lives, and that as a unit—painter and subject—they reject any form of fetishization.

Saldamando says, “I paint my life from my point of view.” Her interest in the construction of identity through popular culture resonates with the ability and perhaps an unconscious desire to make resistance attractive.

Saldamando describes her first reaction to the UCLA environment as one where her understanding of what an artist was shifted from an explorer of identity and culture to a player in “survival of the fittest.” However, as a student she was able to balance the capitalist element of the art world groomed in art schools with her work at Self-Help Graphics and Art, a renowned art institution in East Los Angeles.

Outside of her interest in representation and the contexts of race, class and the “institution”, Saldamando’s work resonates with all of the hybrid cultural and pop visions of a child of the 80’s. There is an underlying pop angst that is perhaps and outgrowth of her childhood days spent watching the magical manifestation of MTV where she found kindred spirits in British Pop icons like Morrissey and The Smiths. This pop culture translation can be seen in the “eclectic mix of materials” used in the Calendar Girl series.

Saldamando’s work ambiguously speaks to something about being in between – not poor and not rich, not happy and not sad, not gangster and not sell-out, not invited and invited. The background is often as important as the foreground in a Saldamando portrait. Her use of dime store decorative glittery papers to construct unobtrusive backdrops simultaneously creates and dis-empowers context while calling into question notions of accessibility and high art.

For example, the glittering red stars and shiny gold paper surrounding the poignant statement of a red star t-shirt worn by “Cindy” in CindyChe, shown at the Che y Que exhibit at Self-Help Graphics and Art in 2003, amply suggests Saldamando’s one-two punch often found in her work. Che Guevara iconography softened up with pop culture fluff—attractive resistance.

The life-size portraits that will accompany the projection of Art Student, call into question Saldamando’s thoughts, desires and experiences as a first year graduate art student.

She accompanies Art Student with portraits of high school seniors taken at Self-Help Graphics & Art who are not college bound. Thus far she has photographed individual students against a stark white wall seated in a chair with either the iconic “CalArts” cardboard coffee cup or a notebook. Why aren’t these students going to CalArts? Wouldn’t it be cool if they were?

Calendar Girls #1, Shizu Saldamando, oil on plywood, collage (triptych)

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