Juana Valdes

Juana Valdes' artistic work is grounded in a multi-disciplinary practice that combines the process of printmaking, photography, sculpture and ceramic. An integral part of Valdes's practice elicits migration as a complex process, constructing history through a continuum that involves both the homespace of the diasporic community and their new homeland. In her current work, Valdes reevaluates the worth of artistic production once considered craft-like. She uses them as a medium to identify herself and as a means to subvert the modern conception of value in visual art. It integrates the social-political discourse within the art object to analyze relationships between contemporary and historical imagery and their connection to the social, political and economical dominance of the cultures that produce them and their impact on cultural memory. Her artwork brings into consciousness past histories (in present day experiences) and engages social justice to question economic inequalities due to race, class, and gender prejudice in society.

Juana created Those The Sun Has Loved during the Miami Goes Elsewhere residency.