Oriana Gatta
Oriana Gatta
Brooklyn Center, MN, United States
About Oriana Gatta
PURPOSE
In order to make physical, emotional, and conceptual space for worlds governed by understanding, acceptance, and love, I use my art to 1) celebrate ambiguity, complexity, and nuance; 2) encourage playful and critical examination of oppressive cultural assumptions and practices; and 3) evoke emotion as a necessary starting point for such (re)examinations.
METHOD/OLOGIES
My purpose directly informs my methods. My original digital art prints begin with impressionistic and/or abstract ink drawings meant to capture a particular emotional experience with a kinetic logic translating mood into movement. I then digitize and manipulate these drawings via a technique I call digital printmaking, which involves arranging and layering multiples of the original/source drawing(s) next to and onto one other.
Achieving the critical mass of a completed digital piece involves a semiotic logic transforming my use of high contrast, texture, impressionistic and abstract forms into visual expressions of antistasis* that juxtapose otherwise categorically separate cultural conventions such as performative distinctions among races, classes, genders, sexualities, ages, abilities, and nationalities.
FOCI
My current work, both digital and fiber, explores the role narrative plays in enabling physical, psychic, and generational traumas at intersections of racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism. My What Lies series, for example, uses titles; semi-transparent, lace-like top layers; simultaneously humanoid skull and eye shapes underneath; and contrasting, monochromatic backgrounds to highlight the deceptive narrative of progress used to rationalize serial genocide, stolen land cultivation, cultural appropriation, and historical revision.
In order to make physical, emotional, and conceptual space for worlds governed by understanding, acceptance, and love, I use my art to 1) celebrate ambiguity, complexity, and nuance; 2) encourage playful and critical examination of oppressive cultural assumptions and practices; and 3) evoke emotion as a necessary starting point for such (re)examinations.
METHOD/OLOGIES
My purpose directly informs my methods. My original digital art prints begin with impressionistic and/or abstract ink drawings meant to capture a particular emotional experience with a kinetic logic translating mood into movement. I then digitize and manipulate these drawings via a technique I call digital printmaking, which involves arranging and layering multiples of the original/source drawing(s) next to and onto one other.
Achieving the critical mass of a completed digital piece involves a semiotic logic transforming my use of high contrast, texture, impressionistic and abstract forms into visual expressions of antistasis* that juxtapose otherwise categorically separate cultural conventions such as performative distinctions among races, classes, genders, sexualities, ages, abilities, and nationalities.
FOCI
My current work, both digital and fiber, explores the role narrative plays in enabling physical, psychic, and generational traumas at intersections of racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism. My What Lies series, for example, uses titles; semi-transparent, lace-like top layers; simultaneously humanoid skull and eye shapes underneath; and contrasting, monochromatic backgrounds to highlight the deceptive narrative of progress used to rationalize serial genocide, stolen land cultivation, cultural appropriation, and historical revision.
Education
Though not formally trained as an artist, my current art practice has developed over several years during which I used higher education to investigate meaning embedded in and with which we imbue visual culture – earning a B.A. in English and Psychology, an M.A. in Gender Studies, and a Ph.D. in English. My doctoral research examined intersections of visual culture, feminist theory and rhetoric, comics studies, and critical pedagogy, making the argument that effective visual analysis requires visual composition and that visual meaning-making techniques can be generatively applied to and employed in other communicative contexts.
I employed this perspective on the relationships between image/ word and analysis/composition to the curriculum I developed as an English/Writing Studies professor, giving first-year composition students opportunities to work in multiple material and digital media and to consider what they wanted to say in relation to the various ways in which they could say it.
In advanced undergraduate courses, I continued to foster students developing their own aesthetically and ethically critical perspectives by challenging their understanding of and belief in the value of a disciplinary distinction between fine art and writing.
Over time, my scholarship tipped increasingly toward visual composition over analysis, including the publication of an abstract comic as scholarship and the visual design of a model methodology for understanding students’ writing struggles.
Ultimately, I decided to focus on my art practice full time — I am exhilarated by the new lease on life this decision has given me.
I employed this perspective on the relationships between image/ word and analysis/composition to the curriculum I developed as an English/Writing Studies professor, giving first-year composition students opportunities to work in multiple material and digital media and to consider what they wanted to say in relation to the various ways in which they could say it.
In advanced undergraduate courses, I continued to foster students developing their own aesthetically and ethically critical perspectives by challenging their understanding of and belief in the value of a disciplinary distinction between fine art and writing.
Over time, my scholarship tipped increasingly toward visual composition over analysis, including the publication of an abstract comic as scholarship and the visual design of a model methodology for understanding students’ writing struggles.
Ultimately, I decided to focus on my art practice full time — I am exhilarated by the new lease on life this decision has given me.
