Artist Interview: Shizu Saldamando

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Jasmine Fernandez: This is Jasmine Fernandez at the National Portrait Gallery with Shizu Saldamando and I wanted to ask you if you could describe your philosophy on art for us.

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Shizu Saldamando: OK, I think artists just sort of document their lives and I think most art is basically a self-portrait in different ways.

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So, for me it's an insight into my own life. So, I do a lot of portraits of my friends, family, different mundane social situations that I happen to encounter just by living my life and documenting it.

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So, for me it's more of a documentation of my own life and giving everybody else a view into what I'm interested in and what's important to me.

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So, in that way, I use different mediums as a way to uphold that and to inform the work a little bit more but that's my--and I think most people do that as well.

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Everybody is into their own world and their own head about what they like and that's what they depict.

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I think I was talking to some of my friends, and they were saying how when they were younger, what they were into sort of carries on to like their practice now.

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I know my friend--let's see--Noah, he would do these--he said he was really into sailing novels or something and then all of his art was based around sailing and putting these installations in the ocean and photographing them.

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My friend Kandace, who would do these really ornate depictions of savage women and nature and sort of playing with this idea of us like historical stereotypes of the savage women or whatever--was really into like Charlotte Bronté novels-sorry, Emily Bronté, sorry!

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But yeah so, there this sort of carried-on theme that you have like throughout your life that sort of never--I guess maybe changes a little bit of story throughout your--

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I guess when you grow up but pretty much thematically I see like it kind of stays the same a little bit, with what people are into. I guess as long as you're true to that, then, cool.

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Jasmine Fernandez: So what does 'Asian-American' mean to you?

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Shizu Saldamando: Um, yeah that's a really interesting question, because I think it's a really personal --so it's different for every person and

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thinking about it well that's a really loaded question as well, because it sorts of acts into the premise that somehow you're different because you're Asian?

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And so it's sort of like, well, if you had let's say a portrait show of white men, would you ask them what does being white, male mean to you, as well?

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I mean, it's sort of like-- I think that's some of the questions that probably some of the listeners probably ask themselves too; like what do you identify with, culturally?

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And then maybe think like okay, well what does whatever I am--fill in the blank--mean to me?

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I think they would feel sort of, gosh I don't really know what to say about that because it is such a heavy, loaded question in that you are something-somehow different in that. Or different from this.

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Yeah it's sort of like, it's sort of like you're... obviously being defined by your ethnicity.

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Being other than white, sort of. That's how I interpreted the question, so what does that mean to be like the other or being othered.

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Jasmine Fernandez: Yeah.

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Shizu Saldamando: So, for me I'm very proud of being Asian and who I am and, I guess Japanese-American side and I'm Mexican as well.

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But at the same time I sort of would like to have my artwork be viewed with other issues rather than just as an ethnic or centralist read.

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But also in terms of themes, thematics. I think if you ask other artists as well-

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the only problem I have with that question maybe is that it's not asked as often to other artists of like European, Western European descent.

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So, yeah I mean would you ask Richard Serra or Andy Warhol, “How does being a White American influence your work?" And so that's sort of why the question is really strange to me.

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But, for this, I guess context of like the audience trying to educate the public about being different or being Asian, I mean

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It's an understandable question why they would pose it. But it's just a strange one for me personally.

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Because I've grown up in the U.S. I was born here, so was my parents. In California especially, there are so many Asians and Latinos.

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So it's sort of like this luxury that I can take it for granted that I am a minority but I don't feel like one.

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Jasmine Fernandez: You're not constantly reminded--
Shizu Saldamando: Right, right, and so maybe on the East coast it's different. I don't know everywhere else it might be, but yeah.

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Jasmine Fernandez: It's similar to like the gender issue, right--

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Shizu Saldamando: Right, like how as a woman artist how it is your work.

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How do you feel about being a woman, doing this or x and x or being in this and this field about being a woman,

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It comes with its own issues of course and you get different issues that you have to deal with.

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For the most part, yeah, I just think it's an interesting question to--

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Jasmine Fernandez: It is an interesting-- it's an interesting balance too. Because if you look at the art that is usually in here, it is mostly like

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Jasmine Fernandez: You know and then now you are introducing Asian American artists, so it is making it a bit more distinct.

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Shizu Saldamando: Right it is sort of like the subjectivity of like a white male is sort of taken for granted as the main centre of everything and everybody else is sort of like acting on the periphery and so they have to find themselves only in relation to like a white male

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Jasmine Fernandez: Always in comparison

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Shizu Saldamando: Right and it is sort of I think of my work and the portraits that I do of my friends I am trying to de-centre that centre of a white male I guess artist and just to my own life and by creating images of my own friends who might happen to be white too or however they are and just from my experience so.

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Jasmine Fernandez: So what are the classic stories, jokes, or songs in your family?

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Shizu Saldamando: Ok um my parents are both um activists and so um they are very politisized and they would take me to protests.

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I think for me I always felt sort of, I don't want to say alienated from that like extreme activism of the sixties but it's just sort of like, was an interesting/contentious topic for me and my parents they were like very angry.

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Which was great in terms of the struggle in that generation with what they have accomplished and paving the way, opening doors for other artists to show and everything that's great.

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But for me that is why I choose to depict who I choose to depict because they're sort of revolutionary in their own right just from their existence and that they're the legacy of all the struggle that happened in the sixties.

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So, for me I guess the songs would be protest songs or something thats what I would say or yeah I guess I figure that this question wants me to go into more like traditional Japanese songs or something.

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Which I wasn't really familiar with at all cause I mean my dad was a huge Santana fan and my mom really is not like that much into music. I guess she likes really cheesy like sort of protest music and like I don't know I guess she liked this band called a Grain of Sand or Hiroshima or somebody.

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She's really into the asian yellow power movements and so that was her thing so that's like a personal I guess like what I grew up with and my dad I guess he would play a lot of Queen records too like that was really big Queen fan and then like the Beatles he was a really big Beatles fan.

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My dad was more into like a record collector so he had all these different records that he was into and that sort of paved the way for me to be a big music fan and a lot of my work is about musical subculture and I just saw the Latino music exhibit, that was so incredible, like I had friends in there that I knew and that was really powerful to see in that space as well.

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Jasmine Fernandez: It was nice for you to like share the same gallery.

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Shizu Saldamando: Right! It was really awesome and my mom would do a lot of oral histories, trying to interview her family as well and hearing her stories from other people that were interned in the camps.

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She worked on like curriculum about, I guess like, the incarceration camps as Roger likes to say that's what they are now so I guess those are like stories and anecdotes but I mean it's sort of funny to talk about stories from your family when you're in an art gallery like, I don't know, again would you ask other people what stories they had from their childhood as well but I guess, I mean, you know, not to be like

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Jasmine Fernandez: Oh no, I think it's just um to provide the listeners, you know, with a little more insight--

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Shizu Saldamando: --like personal--

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Jasmine Fernandez: --into the artist.

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But I think looking at your art alone, when I look at it I feel like I am looking at your like family pictures you know like the little candid photos that people collect over the years and I really like that

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did you always do that kind of art

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Shizu Saldamando: Right yeah I think even in High school I did portraits, actually from far back as middle school I would do portraits of my friends they would give my pictures and I would draw them they would like trade for something like a couple of dollars and I would draw their portrait for them during math class or something.

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So yeah I've always done portraits of people and I think its just I'll always do portraits because you have a sort of meditation on the process and you really meditate on the person and something that is out of like extreme love and care and so the labor that's involved and also I work for my own snapshot photography so there's all these different layers that go into it that sort of make it like that mediate all these different ways and it becomes something else in the end but um I get really happy like when my friends see it and they get happy too so in that way it's really cheesy like art practice in that it's born out of it.

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I don't view it necessarily as a really academic way, I guess the way I talk about it can be cause I know all of the different layers that go into making it and make it more of like a research process for me in terms of culling the different photos, going to events and documenting certain aspects of what I want but then the outside process I think sort of can transcend that just the talk about that so

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Jasmine Fernandez: Um you were talking about the aesthetic earlier, about the gold leaf you know, it's really beautiful, can you go into it a little bit more

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Shizu Saldamando: Oh yeah I think the gold leaf functions in the same way that um different collage aspects of the work function in that I use, referencing different materials using different like wood grain or the origami paper or glitter paper or glitter itself and that is just another to the work and to complicate things a little bit so its not so contrived as a painting you know like a canvas Modernist painting it's just more of a collage almost sculptural process for me in that you lay things down, glue things, and every crafty as well like referencing a lot of crafts and sort of like folk art sort of, that's what I'm really interested in and what I get into when I see work, it's a lot of craft work I really like more so than just say a traditional oil painting so in that way that's how the gold leaf can function.

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It also functions as well as like the collage in that you have all these different signifiers and these different layers to you in terms of what everybody's influenced by like fashion and dress and in that way um the collage sort of functions in the same way in that you take from all these different genres or style cues or musical influences and you can construct yourself to the world and in that way a collage sort of functions that way for me

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Jasmine Fernandez: Mhm. Okay, thank you.