Tania Alvarez
Born in Sevilla, Spain, Tania Alvarez immigrated to the United States with her family in 1983. After receiving her BFA in 2005 from Pratt Institute, she continued her studies in Barcelona, Spain, earning a Postgraduate Degree from Elisava School of Design in 2009.
Currently residing in Queens, NY, her work has been shown in multiple group exhibitions including “Reflections” and “Square” at Space Womb Gallery (Queens, NY), Art Plus LIC Gallery (Queens, NY), Salon 13 (NYC), an invitational exhibit from the NLAPW (The National League of American Pen Women) at St. Josephs College (Brooklyn, NY), and Pratt’s Alumni Art and Design Fair. Alvarez is also an annual participant in LIC Open Studios, where she was featured and interviewed for her work by Lobsterandcanary.blogspot.com.
Tania’s work can be found in private collections in New York, Massachusetts, and Spain.
Artist’s Statement:
Our minds are constantly bombarded by new experiences and emotions. Over time, it becomes impossible to store all of it accurately and we are left with small, obscure fragments of what once was so full and real. Everything else seems to disappear. This concept, which I have always found fascinating, is called “memory”.
Over the past few years, I have taken more time to reflect on this internal process with hopes of finding a new understanding and appreciation of my own experiences. What I found was something that, now, seems so clear: Memories are not something we have, they are something we create. They do not form a straight timeline. Instead, they form a massive puzzle. Only in trying to it put it all back together myself did I find that some of the most important pieces get lost over time. In my most recent work, I aimed to directly translate this complicated, invisible language of the past into something more tangible; something that could be pieced together physically and understood visually. Using my expressive language, I manipulated a wide variety of materials to recreate and explore my memories. Each mixed-media piece represents a unique moment in my life; not only in terms of symbolizing a memory, but also in how my understanding of that memory has changed over time.
Websites:
Personal – http://www.taniaalvarez.com
Blog - http://taniascribbles.tumblr.com
Email: