Beth Davila Waldman 1997-2024 by Beth Davila Waldman

By (author): Beth Davila Waldman

Title: Beth Davila Waldman 1997-2024

Subtitle: A Mid-Career Retrospective

Blurb/Shorttext:

I dig for hope, I strive to change. I make art to make the idea of change possible by breaking ground and reinventing potential new constructs. I am a visual artist based out of the San Francisco Bay Area with a concurrent studio practice in Los Angeles and an inherent practice rooted in the historic grounds of Upstate New York. As an interdisciplinary artist, my art leads with the idea of sanctuary from the various urban, undeveloped and dense urban terrains I walk through in the continuous chapters of life.

The artwork presented in this mid-career retrospective catalog embraces a theoretical return to place using time as a framework, site as a reference, and material as a context. The resulting abrasions and shards strive to narrate the condition of the breeching survivor. They are vulnerable, yet powerful, dangerous while nodding towards chance. Having been led by the notion of sanctuary in examining our current political and historic landscape, I have been scanning our built environment for signs of the walls that made homes over time and cultures for centuries. My focus has been watching the development of civilization from their initial centers sprawl to the outskirts to create new homes. From the squatters on the rooftops of buildings in Hong Kong to those in the vast valleys outside my mother’s homeland city of Arequipa, Peru to the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami, I have been witnessing with my lens the nomadic lifestyles humans embrace out of necessity to find our place in this world. 

The concept of navigation and finding a place to call home has become a nomadic lifestyle of my own through my own art and our life in today's current context. Having lived in 3 different states, attended 6 different schools and lived in 7 different homes before the age of 18 with family in two different continents, the idea of a place to call home has personally been temporary. Navigating for me has become an act, activity and axis through which my sense of being and my art is being created.

This Book is my first major publication covering more than half of my life and career.  It's given me the opportunity to connect my work, starting in 1997 all the way through my most recent exhibitions in Los Angeles. The book highlights my personal work as well as my California-based curatorial projects working with other artists whose practices have resonated with me. It includes several plates and six essays from international scholars and critics including SFMOMA Curator of Photography Shana Lopes, National Arts Writer and Curator DeWitt Cheng based in San Francisco, Gallerist and Painter George Lawson based in New York, Sculptor and my key Professor during my years at San Francisco Art Institute John Roloff, and Alberto Moreno, Art Historian based in CDMX .

ISBN: 978-87-7620-422-8

Book language: English

Publishing house: Snap Collective

Website: www.snap-collective.com

Editorial Assistant: Silvia Antoni

Designer: Tea Jagodic

Published on: in production

Category: Art

Price (€): 129

Keywords: beth davila waldman, beth waldman, waldman, contemporary art, painting, photography, sculpture, installation, etching, los angeles, san francisco, landscape art, political art, interdisciplinary art