Acrylic on canvas
36" x 24" x 2"
 
___
 
Through my art, painting, drawing and mixed media, I examine my Chicana identity where I explore issues of race, class, gender, and religious and cultural traditions in the Mexican American family. Drawing from my hybrid heritage of diverse cultural traditions, values and perspectives, I examine the negotiating between differing worldviews and viewpoints within the U.S. and Latin America. These viewpoints often times are perplexing and contradictory. In my paintings, I explore paradoxes of life, and my use of culturally affirming imagery is a decolonizing strategy.
 
---
 
Valerie Aranda is a visual artist from Tempe, Arizona. Based in Georgia, she has been teaching at Georgia College & State University since 2002. She received her BFA from Arizona State University in 92’ and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 2000. Along with teaching, Aranda has a studio practice in Milledgeville where she continues to experiment and create new work while also working on community-based murals. She works with materials ranging from drawing media, acrylic, oil, and digital painting. Aranda's work includes mixed-media artworks where she creates multilayered paintings reflecting her identity complexities. Her paintings are hybrids of natural and artificial environments to create realms that reflect on her identity as a Latinx woman in the U.S. Projects include murals, exhibitions, and residencies in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, California, Texas, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, Mexico, and board membership with the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture based in San Antonio, Texas.