Yvette Molina
Instagram: yvettemolina.studio
Website: http://www.yvettemolina.com
Bio: Yvette Molina is a Mexican-American artist focused on the relationship between justice and caring. Her multidisciplinary work includes public engagement, painting, processional banners, performance, comics, costumes, action figures, and collage. Learning and incorporating traditional techniques is significant to her practice as a means of connecting to history, culture, and embodied forms of ancestral knowledge. Ongoing projects include New Pantheon, a series of reimagined, hybrid gods born to confront the world’s challenges, Big Bang Votive, a large-scale installation and communal storytelling project centered on love and delight, and Freedom Beings, a portrait series depicting the myriad ways humans remain self-expressed through play while sharing and caring for one another. Yvette has exhibited across the US and internationally at venues such as the American Embassies in Uruguay and Latvia, the Stockholm Fringe Festival, Tang Teaching Museum, Brattleboro Museum, The Newark Museum of Art, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Spring Break Art Show, NADA Art Fair and the Legion of Honor and de Young Museums of California as an AIR awardee. Other residency fellowships include the Vermont Studio Center, Jentel Foundation, UC Berkeley Worth Ryder Gallery, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. Born in Kansas City, Yvette currently splits her time between Oakland, CA and Brooklyn, NY.
Statement: I am a Mexican-American artist exploring themes of justice and love. I believe the role of the artist is vital in shaping the world. To this end, I use my artwork as a tool for community building, generative conflict, and healing. My approach is multidisciplinary with a growing emphasis on public engagement. My projects are often site-specific and include everything from performance, processional banners, costumes, and comics, to painting, installation, and sculpture. Handicraft materials and methods are prominent in my work both for their sensual beauty, but also as a means of privileging what has at times been deemed a lesser form of creative expression. Learning and incorporating traditional techniques is a way for me to connect to history, culture, and deeper forms of ancestral knowledge. I have trained in gilding and egg tempera painting as well as Byzantine and Russian Prosopone iconology. In recent years I have been applying these devotional painting techniques onto scavenged cardboard as part of a long running examination of our throw-away society and who and what gets included in our circles of care. Ongoing projects include New Pantheon, a series of reimagined, hybrid gods born to confront the world’s challenges, Big Bang Votive, a communal storytelling project where participants are invited to share a personal story of love or delight and Freedom Beings, a portrait series depicting the myriad ways humans remain self-expressed through play while sharing and caring for one another.
