Los Angeles-based artist Shizu Saldamando was born in 1978 to parents of Mexican-American and Japanese-American descent and raised in San Francisco’s Mission District. Saldamando merges painting and collage, often using origami paper, glitter, or gold leaf in her compositions, many of which are painted on wood or found surfaces. Her modern portraits and innovative methods challenge social constructs pertaining to individual and collective identity within the broader context of the “American Portrait.” Saldamando’s visual biographies, which use her friends, family, and fellow members of the Chicanx creative community in Los Angeles, create new ways of seeing and being seen.

On November 2, 6:30-8pm, Shizu Saldamando talks to curator Amanda Krugliak about Shizu's artistic practice and her exhibition When This is All Over / Cuando Esto Termine.

About the artist: Shizu Saldamando is an LA based mixed media artist with an emphasis on portraiture. She received her B.A. from UCLA’s School of Arts and Architecture and her M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited both locally and internationally and experiments with a broad range of surfaces and materials. Saldamando’s practice employs tattooing, video, painting and drawing on canvas, wood, paper, and cloth. The work functions as homage, as well as documentation, of friends and peers within artistic and musical subcultures around the Los Angeles metropolitan area. She is currently represented by Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles.

Shizu Saldamando is the 2021 Paula and Edwin Sidman Fellow in the Arts at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities.