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Transcription: [00:00:00]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:00:12]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:00:22]
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.

[00:00:38]
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.

[00:00:50]
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.

[00:00:57]
Everybody is into their own world and their own head about what they like and that's what they depict.

[00:01:04]
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.

[00:01:14]
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.

[00:01:29]

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!

[00:01:46]
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--

[00:01:57]
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.

[00:02:15]
{SPEAKER name="Jasmine Fernandez"}
So what does 'Asian-American' mean to you?

[00:02:18]
{SPEAKER name="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

[00:02:27]
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?

[00:02:38]
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?

[00:02:49]
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?

[00:02:56]
And then maybe think like okay, well what does whatever I am--fill in the blank--mean to me?

[00:03:01]
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.

[00:03:13]
Yeah it's sort of like, it's sort of like you're... obviously being defined by your ethnicity.

[00:03:21]
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.

[00:03:29]
{SPEAKER name="Jasmine Fernandez"}
Yeah.

[00:03:31]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:03:40]
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.

[00:03:51]

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

[00:03:58]
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.

[00:04:06]
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.

[00:04:17]
But, for this, I guess context of like the audience trying to educate the public about being different or being Asian, I mean

[00:04:25]
It's an understandable question why they would pose it. But it's just a strange one for me personally.

[00:04:31]
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.

[00:04:40]
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.

[00:04:45]
{SPEAKER name="Jasmine Fernandez"}
You're not constantly reminded--

{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:04:54]
{SPEAKER name="Jasmine Fernandez"}
It's similar to like the gender issue, right--

[00:04:57]
{SPEAKER name="Shizu Saldamando"}
Right, like how as a woman artist how it is your work.

[00:05:01]
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,

[00:05:07]
It comes with its own issues of course and you get different issues that you have to deal with.

[00:05:13]
For the most part, yeah, I just think it's an interesting question to--

[00:05:19]
{SPEAKER name="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





























Transcription Notes:
Unsure about the name or if she said let's see at 1:14 Please include frequent speaker identification