Artist Biography

Tatiana Garmendia was born in Cuba at the height of the Cold War and remembers playing in abandoned missile trenches as a girl. In her interdisciplinary work, history is understood as meditations on national and private mythologies, as the stories we tell others and whisper to ourselves. Garmendia has exhibited her work throughout the US and in many countries including England, Italy, Germany, Mexico, and India. She is the recipient of numerous awards including two Artist Trust Fellowships, the coveted Cintas International Fellowship and Pollock Krasner Grant. Her works are in public collections in Seattle, New York, Washington D.C., Miami, Illinois, California, Ohio, and the Dominican Republic. 

Artist Statement

My art practice wrestles with the personal and the historic, the ambiguity and uncertainty of life as it is. I experiment with different psychological personas in the studio, digging deeply in search of images with universal speak. In art, as in life– I speak a patois of English and Spanish, peppered with a Lucumi phrase here and there. My tongues and life mythologies are multiple, and in the studio, I call upon different visual languages and personas to lend their inflections to my expression.

With the Alchemical series of paintings, I take formal aspects from Cubism, blending them with Pop Art and Feminist historicism, to create a new visual patois I call Cubism 3.0. These paintings enrich these renown patriarchal bulwarks with the mythical language of alchemy.  Here the archetypal bride embodies Carl Jung’s interpretation of alchemy as a metaphor for the individuation towards the Self.  

CV

Digital Catalog http://tatianagarmendia.com/online-catalog/