ARTIST STATEMENT
My 100% HUMAN screenprints are an outgrowth of a larger installation of my work for the Lubeznik Center for the Arts exhibition “Well Behaved Women: Celebrating 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage” in 2020. Well-Behaved Women includes living, contemporary artists, and deceased artists from different eras. Many artists share their lived experiences, addressing areas where women lack access or rights, leaning into the emotions felt due to inequity, critiquing language, and subverting the canon of the “male gaze,” where women are presented as objects rather than subjects. They elevate and reclaim mediums, such as embroidery and quilting, which were historically denigrated as “craft” and “women’s work.” Some draw strength from the spiritual power inherent in their female ancestry. The external world inspires my inner world. My viewers may see themselves as having intersecting and overlapping social identities. These experiences may be empowering and limiting and culminate in the idea of being many things at once. These intersectional experiences relate to being human in every sense of the word. The medium of printmaking typically allows for an array of art collectors to enjoy the work. The style of the typography is rough and gritty, to connect with those facets of our humanity.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, I am an artist/art educator/
designer living and working in Chicago, Illinois. I attended Massachusetts
College of Art/BFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago/MFA, and the
University of Illinois Chicago/BFA. What draws me in and gives me pause in the natural world is the raw, rough,
and sublime. Out of that experience comes the creation of works that are
simultaneously provocative, gorgeous, and at times, terrifying.
My art draws influence from the history of abstraction, my Armenian-American
identity, nature, Art Brut, memories, and more. Employing an additive/
subtractive process with materials like paint, beeswax, soil, and threads. Art history, painting, printmaking, design, typography, and color theory form the foundation for the conceptual and compositional aspects of my work.
Recurring symbols, both recognizable and cryptic, manifest in my pieces,
bringing to life provocative worlds waiting to be explored. The figure, nature,
mosaic tiles, textures, patterns, free forms, organic lines, symbols of hope, Art
Brut, and dreams inspire me conceptually.
© Anoush Bargamian