RESISTANCE
Organized as symbolic systems meant to analyze and chart multiple bodies of knowledge, this work is
conceptually anchored by my research on the human condition and the desire for emancipation. I consider how history can appear through a work of art.  Whether in spectral form, as invisible structure or excluded voice, the past is present as a return of the repressed.

Ideas about liberation, both at an intimate and social level, have long been a concern in my work.  This often leads to my use of a visual language that is highly symbolic and deeply connected to a civil rights aesthetic viewpoint: the paintings are representational and tethered to allegory.  The work before you is a meditation on strength and resistance.  The series is based on the multiplicity of roles women have performed in movements of resistance, rebellion and war. Mapping is used as a point of departure. Without regard for space and time, new imaginary mappings are created by juxtaposing different political, geographical and historical cartographies. This first iteration of the series is commemorative in nature, charting a course for a global, transhistorical account of multiple feminisms engaged in battles.

DIVINE IMPULSE
I approach figurative painting with particular interest in human behavior.  I use the figure to explore and
illustrate how memories are stored and expressed by the body.  In this series, each portrait is a snapshot of a woman dancing alone; there is no apparent stage, no audience.  Her contours are traced by the blanket of nebulous color in the background.  Bold and finer paint strokes delicately intersect to create an illusion of slight delay in resolution, allowing the surface paint to emerge as movement.  This interplay between blurred and sharp focus lays down the rhythm by which to follow the dance. The carved-out path suggests that the momentum will continue beyond the edges of the painting.   Special attention is given to the gestures that distinguish each woman: a quivering lip, a clenched fist or the direction of her gaze.  These subtleties contextualize the dancer’s motivation.

The women in this series dance with the uninhibited grace and coolness that comes when no one is
watching.  The dancer roams about the space shaping the surrounding environment with her moves, 
redirecting the energy that impels her to shake it off.  My intention is to record this unbridled moment captured in full swing.  It is a shared universal impulse, expressed in a variety of personal and unique styles.  Through this collection of paintings, I memorialize the nomadic thread of rhythm that moves through each woman, weaving an uninterrupted dance.   Much like the live wire carrying current, once severed from the continuum,  each woman dances freely and yet in this freedom there is solidarity.

FRONTERA
“My work is motivated by contemporary interpretations of the borderlands, extensive documentation and research on human rights issues, psychological theories on the systemic memory hypothesis, as well as personal accounts and oral history.  I look at innovations and experimentations from throughout art history as guides for structuring my conceptual reality of the corporeal manifestation of psychological violence and degradation.  Together, these investigations and experiences allow for a comprehensive approach to the production of ideas and images interpreting the border reality."

At a relatively early age, Adriana Gallego has created an impressive body of work and a niche for herself as an outspoken, socially conscious artist.  Born in the border town of Nogales, she became acquainted with, in her words, “both the brutal nature of survival and institutional oppression.  I leaned that la línea (the border) is not a passive or static world but rather one that lives in permanent tension and fragmentation.”  Channeling her social concerns into her art, she entered the College of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona (Tucson) on scholarship and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1997, simultaneously having apprenticed with Jane Dickson, Alan Sonfist, and the Alternative Museum in New York.  In 1997, she became the youngest first place award winner of the Ford Foundation’s Siqueiros-Pollock Binational Painting Competition, juried by Jose Luis Cuevas and Luis Jimenez.  Immediately launching a series of solo and group exhibitions, Gallego also became an instructor, teaching art at the University of Arizona, Theatre of Hearts/Youth First in California, and the Central California Arts Network.

In all of these activities, Gallego maintains, her interest in social issues concerning the border.  Exhibiting her paintings on the subject in 1998, she told a journalist, “The divisions go beyond a simple division of land; they become divisions in the human spirit and psyche.”

Gallego’s paintings are characterized by a lush application of oils on canvases that she deliberately defaces to represent the scar of the subjects she portrays.  For this artist, texture is a key element in the process of creating.  She often employs a fleshy gesso application and a sanding of layers to arrive at succinct and penetrating works.  While working to reframe the border’s politicized and exploited social identity, Gallego ultimately expresses and unspoken humanity in her haunting images.  The body fragmented is a recurrent theme, suggesting that the regional anxiety is replicated in the psyche of its inhabitants.  We find many parts, but few completed visions of the physical.  As the body endures the insurgency of its environment, a struggle to be whole ensues.  The intensity of Gallego’s palette is even more striking when considered against her graceful use of illumination.  Enveloped by the surging color fields, the subjects seem to survive only by the tender fortitude of the artist’s intent.  Gallego successfully documents the reality of a place and people relegated to the fragmentary fancies of politicos and demagogues by carefully reconstructing the impact of these antagonisms.  It is an elaboration that is as timely as it is powerful.

In the painting Liberación: Contradictoria, two hands are entrapped by an aloe vera plant that seems poised for a strangulation.  Produced for Gallego’s Fragmentos de Liberación series, this work presents the contradictory function of a plant that is traditionally used for medicinal purposes.  Considered in this new vein, a painful realization occurs.  Nature itself has turned against the individual in the inverted logic that dominated the imaginary line separating Mexico and the United States.  The sanded surface of this pain confirms the aggression that is endured by an anonymous and ruptured subject.  Gallego avoids making a condemnation by the narrowest of margins.  The hands are bound but continue to struggle, abetted by the fortitude of the gesso application.  This conflagration balances at the edge of the canvas, poised to burst its restraints, a portent perhaps of what may occur if the border malice continues unabated.

Anhelos is an abstract work that employs a precise figuration counterpoint to complete its emotional impact.  Violent black strokes pierce fields of deep blues and corporeal reds.  In the left field of this work, a female apparition fixates on the viewer.  The seizures of contrasting colors enclose this elusive figure in a space of militant neutrality.  There is a guarded effect produced.  An anonymous longing provokes a desire to achieve recognition, to invade the protective cell.  Alas, the viewer is compelled to feel something in the face of a persistent perplexity.  This segregation of emotion and intellect are exemplary of Gallego’s ability to rescue the emotional truth fro the degeneration of rationalism.  (Joaquín Alvarado)

Excerpt from Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art :Artists, Works, Culture and Education Bilingual Press, Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University, 2002. http://latinoartcommunity.org/community/ChicArt/ArtistDir/AdrGal.html

Adriana's Story

Adriana graduated magna cum laude from the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts.  As a painter, her artwork is forged from ideals about equality and understanding rooted in the Civil Rights and Feminist movements, with sensibilities born out of her upbringing alongside the United States-Mexico border. She is the recipient of the Border-Ford Bi-national Painting Award and continues to build a repertoire of exhibitions, publications and speaking engagements.  

Adriana Gallego was most recently Chief Operating Officer at the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC). In her cumulative roles as an artist, administrator and educator she has developed programs, grants, services and resources in support of arts organizations, artists, universities/schools, community groups and government agencies. Prior to joining NALAC, Adriana was the Director of Strategic Initiatives with the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Educational Assistant at the Norton Simon Museum, and Arts Educator throughout Arizona and California. Currently, Gallego is on the board of directors for Grantmakers in the Arts and Map Fund.