Susana Aragón
Born in Lima, Peru, Susana has been a visual artist since 1982. Her work emerges from daily experiences, memory, and dreams. She experiments, transforms, plays, and connects different media: from video installations, multimedia shows, public space interventions, to book -objects, ceramic, photography, poetry, costume design, printing, painting and art education. She is interested in the way installations create experiences and opportunities for connections between human beings, inner selves, nature, and environments.
"I start with a collection of images, poems, found objects, garbage, dreams, memories, emotions, and songs (among others). After a while, I put them together in different ways. For example, Tied cardboard boxes could become Memory. A dart game with a heart video target could become a search for healing the heart. Dresses can become canvases to give life without a body. A musical jewelry box becomes a piece to exchange emotions among random people. A white gown becomes a transformative screen on someone’s body. Suitcases filled with video monitors show personal luggage. Various knots made of different textures remind us of this ancient symbol to remember.
I create experiences with personal messages in the shape of videos, poetry, installations, pictures and mixed media pieces. I believe art can create opportunities for connections between the outside (nature or environment) and our inside as human beings (feelings, emotions, memories, etc.).
Projecting video on the body of the audience is a way to see your body as part of something bigger– You can be water or trees or sky, etc. Video projections open other possibilities in our minds creating an illusion of no time”.
Aragón has shown her work at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco; the MCC Gallery in San Francisco; SOMArts San Francisco; Ghost Town Galleries, Oakland; Your Local Project, NY; Fruitvale Day of the Dead, Oakland; The Mapp (Mission Artist Project), San Francisco; Clarion Alley SF, Eclectix Store Gallery, El Cerrito; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Red Poppy Art House, San Francisco; Qoricancha Temple, Cuzco-Peru; San Marcos University, Lima-Peru; Asahi Shimbun, Japan; Museum of Civilization Otawa, Canada; Vermont University; Tracy gallery, San Francisco; Bernanos Gallery, Paris, France; Caroline Corre Gallery, Paris, France.
She has curated shows in Peru and the USA including "Tiempos paralelos," "El mensaje," "Memoria de la tierra," at Qoricancha temple of the sun Contemporary Art Gallery in Cusco, Peru, the "Solo Mujeres" show at Mission Cultural Center: "Home, inside out," in San Francisco and "The tree of life," student’s show at Allston Windows Gallery, Berkeley.
For the past years she has been a juror for “Babel”, an international video art contest.
Her experience working in Art and technology with kids and adults in the Bay Area spans from Thousand Oaks Elementary School (Berkeley), Le Conte Elementary, (Berkeley), Sanchez Elementary (San Francisco), The Mission Cultural Center (San Francisco), SF General patients, SF MOMA, The Marsh Youth Theatre, San Francisco Youth theater, Walden Center & School in Berkeley and Escuela Bilingüe in Emeryville. She has collaborated with other artists in SOTA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and 16th Street Mission Studio.