ARTIST STATEMENT
“Democracy Spoken Here” is series of limited-edition prints examining political events of significance rendered in a variety of media: metal and woodcut letterpress, RISO, silkscreen, among other methods. It is an aesthetic response to a political challenge; how an expression of historical import can be rendered more visible by expressing it typographically. Phrases from the democratic American discourse throughout United States are designed using the typeface Clarendon, and only two colors: red and black.
Ultimately, it is a response to a period of political turbulence, and overturning Roe v. Wade tops the list.
Nothing is more salient than a woman’s right to her body. Any infringement of that right is a form of slavery. Since Roe’s passing, women have been subjected to repeated assaults on their right to decide what’s best for their bodies and minds, and their families. Today, many young women across the United States do not understand how grave their situation is. They think that they’ll have easy access to birth control and that takes care of everything.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The same misogynist entities, feeling victorious, have promised to go after a woman’s right to contraception. Their reasons for doing are convoluted and puerile, but, with the media power they have at their disposal, a woman’s right to her body will erode even more.
A central preoccupation of my art work is to examine what is insufficiently considered. I hope that my work provides people with an opportunity to look anew at something they may have not noticed, or to which they haven’t given much thought. My work aims to awaken a more nuanced understanding of one’s surroundings.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anita Giraldo is an installation artist and designer living and working in New York City.
After graduating from Cooper Union, she produced a photo-documentary project on the cemeteries of the borough of Queens, which received support from the New York State Council on the Arts (1986) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1991).
She worked as an illustrated book designer at Viking Press before opening her own commercial photography studio, photographic advertising campaign, one of with was featured on a billboard in Times Square. In 1996, she created “”See My Voice””, a multimedia installation which unites image, sound and sensor media and was exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe followed by the Artist Residency at Der Werft in Cologne, Germany, and in 2004, the Puffin Foundation Artist Fellowship.
Giraldo earned a Masters of Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts, and in 2007, she was commissioned by the Columbia County Historical Society to photograph a documentary about the industrial architecture of the county, resulting in a one-person show at the Columbia County Museum in 2007. In 2020 she was appointed to as a full time faculty member of Media Technology at the New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn. She was promoted to associate professor in 2017.
In 2014 she exhibited “Steel Ice and Stone”, a multi-media installation at the Gowanus Ballroom in Brooklyn, NY and Art Trenton. Her current project, “Democracy Spoken Here” is a series of typographic fine art prints which has been exhibited throughout the United States and has received acclaim in news publications and public radio.
© Anita Giraldo