Prisma Andrade: Making the Ordinary Sacred [NX152]

Yeah, I was recently working with a friend, reworking my artist statement and trying to figure out how, because I do feel like I'm a little all over the place.

I was like, what's my common theme that others see that I don't? And they were explaining to me, well, all your work is about sanctity.

And I was like, huh? I was like, oh, wait.

You're kind of right.

I think the foundation of my work, whether I'm whatever media material image I'm working with, I am kind of exploring what is sanctity and what can become sacred.

I grew up in a very I went to Catholic school for a good chunk of my life.

I was kind of grew up surrounded by Catholic people.

My family is Hispanic, so I grew up with a lot of ornamentation, surrounded by cathedrals and kind of, you know, growing up with Spanish architecture and cathedrals and all the ornamentation that really kind of influenced my taste and also like excess.

But yeah, growing up, I always kind of looked at the small things and seeing how something like a crochet tapestry or my... uncles and my grandfather's etchings and paintings, how those became martyrs and they became sacred and they became sainthoods and these objects of adoration that kind of paralleled what I was growing up studying in theology and church and religion and how When you rework those images and when you make those and you take them, a small little image or clipping or collage it, you're kind of imbuing a sacredness by spending a lot of time and working with it.

And it's like there is that spiritual excess that you're imbuing into it.

And so all of my work, I feel like, is about... what is sacred? Is it the small? Is it the large? And how do we make something sacred? So I'm thinking about space, but I'm also thinking a lot about archival imagery, working from my family's photo archives, my family's physical archives.

I grew up with a lot of artists in my family, so I grew up surrounded by a lot of their personal art and their personal preferences and their objects and imbuing those with the sacredness that I kind of grew up observing it with like you know, the Catholic saints and their bones and their cathedrals and their like altars.

I think I root a lot of that also in a lot of Latino roots of maximalism and altar making and like taking these little things and like arranging them together with each part to really like imbue a sense of this thing is special.

And recently, a lot of my work, I've been exploring the idea of framing and how frames denote something to be special and of importance and they do shape a narrative.

So I'm always thinking about like, how do I frame my work? Because I always feel like frames make an object whole and they denote this is special.

Look at me, especially growing up.

with all of my walls covered with art and objects and things.

My father was always like, that needs to be framed.

Oh, this work is good.

We need to frame it.

Like there's a sense of speciality that's imbued to it.

And I think especially going up to all of these museums, I was with a lot of like the old classic museums, I get really into the like hand carved gold leaf frames that they would have in like the older sections.

And I was like, And then I'd see like the contemporary works and I was like, where are the frames? Where's like the elaborate hand-carved frames? How do I know this is special? So that's where my work is kind of heading.

But I think my through line is like, how can each object referring to a specific piece become sacred? And how do I take an old photograph, make it sacred, make these people worshiped, make them alive again? Whether it's their actual photographs or their work or their objects.