Emanuela Harris-Sintamarian

  Six Time Art Party Participant

Enough Dots to Connect

Artist’s Website

www.emahsin.com

Artist’s Statement

While a name is a cosmic prison, identity is its guardian. As a Romanian immigrant to the United States, I live in and between two diametrically opposed cultures; from a totalitarian regime to a society in which individuality and information are emphasized. I often dwell upon the relationship of my identity to my displacement, and the ways I have devised to reconcile these incongruous elements. To translate this dilemma formally, my current body of work tackles the dichotomy between containment and liberation by infusing a static diagram with a charge that propels it into motion.

The elements I incorporate in my visual lexicon are either borrowed directly or paraphrased from several disparate arenas including Eastern European folklore, architecture, and topography. Collectively these references create complex and fractured allegorical “maps” of my physical, emotional and intellectual journey. I regard these maps as a means to explore loss itself as a form of identity, an identity that transforms the schema of containment into ritualized forms of self-expropriation.

About the Artist

I was born  in Bucharest, Romania, where I did my undergrad studies at University of Fine Arts. While in college I received a couple of scholarships in Italy (Instituto Romeno di Cultura-Venice) and France (under the tutelage of Association Culturelle de Saint Remy de Provence). In 1999 I came for the first time to the United States in an one-month student exchange program. I volunteered to assist and participate in opening a basic art program for the children of a Sioux Falls Reservation (South Dakota). In the summer of 2000, I returned to the United States on a scholarship offered by the University of Delaware, where I received my first MFA in Printmaking. In 2005, I received my second MFA in Painting at San Jose State University.

Since I relocated to the Bay Area (2002), I have shown at various venues around the Bay, including: Jack Fischer Gallery, Frey & Norris Gallery, ArtSF, SoEX, (San Francisco), Swarm Gallery  and ProArts (Oakland), Triton Museum, (Santa Clara), ICA, Works Gallery, Anno Domini (San Jose) to name just a few.  I have also shown in New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Philadelphia, as well as Sweden, France, Canada, Austria, Italy and Romania. While in 2005 I was nominated for the SECA SFMOMA Award, in 2008 I was the recipient of the 2008ArtShift Award; the Artist’s Grant Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, and the AIR Program Grant from Works Gallery. In 2010 I was the recipient of the 2010 Silicon Valley Arts Council Award. Over the years I have been in several residencies (such as the Djerassi, Vermont Studio Center, Works, ICA-San Jose)