By honoring varied artistic traditions born out of scarcity and incarceration, I hope to deconstruct hierarchical notions within portrait painting and the often conflicting notions of legality within personal subjectivity.

Shizu Saldamando is a Los Angeles-based mixed media artist originally from San Francisco’s Mission district. Primarily concerned with portraiture and drawing, she experiments with a broad range of surfaces and materials from wood panels to bed sheets. Saldamando’s practice employs tattooing, video, painting and drawing on canvas, wood, paper, and cloth, and functions as celebration and homage to peers and loved ones. Her mother’s family is Japanese American, by way of Boyle Heights/Sawtelle areas of Los Angeles, and survivors of the Japanese American Internment camps. Her father is Chicano from Nogales, AZ. She received her B.A. from UCLA School of Art and her M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts. She is currently represented by Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles.

Selected Works