Artist Bio
Saskia Jordá is an interdisciplinary artist working on site-specific installations, soft sculptures, and drawings. Her work has referenced the relationship between body and space, cultural identity, and mapping a sense of place since her undergraduate studies at Arizona State University and her graduate studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she earned her MFA in 2004. She has received various awards, including the Arlene and Morton Scult Contemporary Forum Award of the Phoenix Art Museum and an Artist Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. She has exhibited widely within the United States and internationally, and is currently based in Phoenix, Arizona. In addition to her studio work, Saskia co-founded the Taliesin Artist Residency Program, which she directed from 2005-2017, and has been teaching Drawing and Textiles at college level since 2012.
Statement
In a world where a six-hour airplane flight can transplant a person into a completely alien world, cultural identity is retained through rituals surrounding clothing, play, language, and food. Having relocated from my native Venezuela to the United States as a teenager, I became aware of the layers of ‘skin’ that define and separate cultures—one’s own skin, the second skin of clothing, the shell of one’s dwelling place—all these protecting the vital space of one’s hidden identity. As an interdisciplinary artist and an object-maker my site-specific installations, soft sculptures, and drawings map the tension between retaining one’s identity and assimilating a foreign persona. This immigration and assimilation experience continues to fuel my work as I explore the relationships among body, space, cultural identity, and mapping a sense of place.
Selected Solo + Two Person Exhibitions
2020 Walter Art Gallery, “Prayer for America” – Scottsdale, Arizona
2017 PhxArt Project CityScape & Phoenix Art Museum, “Cacerolazo” – Phoenix, Arizona
Eric Fischl Gallery – Phoenix College, “Lineage” – Phoenix, Arizona
2016 Phoenix Art Museum, “A Geography of Line” – Curator: Gilbert Vicario – Phoenix, Arizona
Prescott College Art Gallery at Sam Hill Warehouse, “Alternate Terrain” – Curator: Julie Comnick – Prescott, Arizona
2013 Grand Central Art Center, “Unraveling Tradition” – Curator: John Spiak – Santa Ana, California
2012 Modified Arts Gallery, “Random Interference: Saskia Jorda + Chris Oatey”- Curator: Jeff Chabot – Phoenix, Arizona
2010 Modified Arts Gallery, “Cartograms of Memory” – Curator: Kim Larkin – Phoenix, Arizona
2007 Art Basel and Volta, “Brainwashing” performance – Curator: Milagros Bello – Basel, Switzerland
2006 And/Or Gallery, “Tom Moody + Saskia Jorda” – Dallas, Texas
Selected Group Exhibitions
2022 Coconino Center For the Arts, “NightVisions” – Curators: Julie Comnick & David Levy – Flagstaff, Arizona
Tempe Center for the Arts, “Degrees of Being” – Curator: Michelle Dock – Tempe, Arizona
2021 Nevada Museum of Art, Disturbances in the Field: Art in the High Desert from Andrea Zittel’s A-Z West to High
Desert Test Sites – Curator: Brooke Hodge – Reno, Nevada
Center Space at Scottsdale Arts, “Socially Distanced”- Curators: Laura Hales & Pamela Winfrey – Scottsdale, Arizona
2020 Tucson Museum of Art, “Arizona Biennial 2020” – Curator: Joe Baker – Tucson, Arizona
2019 Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, “Counter-Landscapes: Performative Actions from the 1970 – Now” –
Curator: Jennifer McCabe – Scottsdale, Arizona
MCC Art Gallery – Mesa Community College, “Threaded” – Jurors: Mark Newport & Maria-Elisa Heg – Mesa, Arizona
Chandler Museum, “Inspired by History” – Collaboration by Vision Gallery & Chandler Museum – Chandler, Arizona
Dorsky Gallery, “Distance” – Works on paper by Skowhegan Alumni – Curators: Betsy Alwin and Steve Locke – Long Island City, New York
2018 Step Gallery, “10 Artist/2000 Speculums” – Curators: Lauren O’Connell and Forrest Solis – Phoenix, Arizona
Grand Rapids Art Museum, “Cacerolazo” at ArtPrize 10 – Curator: Ron Platt – Grand Rapids, Michigan
Vision Gallery and the Chandler Center for the Arts, “Object Inspiration” – Curator: Peter Bugg – Chandler, Arizona
2017 MCC Art Gallery – Mesa Community College, “BLUR” – Curator: Ted Decker – Mesa, Arizona
516 ARTS, “Fires of Change” – Curator: Shawn Skabelund – Albuquerque, New Mexico
SVA Chelsea Gallery, School of Visual Arts “SVA + Skowhegan” – Curator: Lauren Haynes – New York, New York
2016 Harry Wood Gallery, Arizona State University, “It Took A While” – Tempe, Arizona
The University of Arizona Museum of Art, “Fires of Change” – Curator: Shawn Skabelund – Tucson, Arizona
Tucson Museum of Art, “String Theory: Contemporary Art and the Fiber Legacy” – Curator: Julie Sasse – Tucson, Arizona
2015 Coconino Center for the Arts, “Fires of Change” – Curator: Shawn Skabelund – Flagstaff, Arizona (Sponsors:
Southwest Fire Science Consortium, Landscape Conservation Initiative, and National Endowment for the Arts).
Lisa Sette Gallery, “13 Works You’ll Be Lucky to See This Summer”- Curator: Lisa Sette – Phoenix, Arizona
2013 High Desert Test Sites 2013: Joshua Tree – Albuquerque, “Hotshots” – Curator: Andrea Zittel -Crown King, Arizona
2012 Shemer Art Center and Museum, “Tributaries” – Curator: William LeGoullon – Phoenix, Arizona
2011 Tucson Museum of Art, “Arizona Biennial 2011” – Curator: Anne Ellegood – Tucson, Arizona
2010 Arizona State University Art Museum, “Open for Business” – Curator: John Spiak – Tempe, Arizona
Phoenix Art Museum, “2009 Contemporary Forum Grant Recipients Exhibition” – Phoenix, Arizona
2009 Haidian Theater, “Walks of Life” Set design – Beijing, China
Collaboration with choreographer Shouze Ma and Costume Designer Galina Mihaleva
MonOrchid Gallery, “[opuntia vulgaris]” – Phoenix, Arizona
2008 SPACES Gallery, “Bi-Lingual” – Cleveland, Ohio
Museo de Arte Moderno y Centro Cultural de España, “Arte de la Incertidumbre – Entre Muros” –
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
2007 Union Gallery, University of Maryland “Hyphenation” – College Park, Maryland
Festival Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo, “mobile homes” Installation – Leon, Mexico
2006 Galería Tomás Chávez Morado, “Entre Muros / Between Walls” – Guanajuato Capitál, Mexico
MASS Gallery, “20 [MB]” – Austin, Texas
Exit Art, “The Studio Visit” – New York, New York
2005 The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, “Conspicuous Production” – Dallas, Texas
Eyedrum Gallery, “Infusion”- Atlanta, Georgia
2004 Pool Art Center, Drury University, “Emerging NYC” – Springfield, Missouri
Rosen Galleries, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, “Out of Bounds” – Boone, North Carolina
West Side Gallery, School of Visual Arts, “In a Bind” – Curator: Rachel Gugelberger – New York, New York
Public Art Projects
2017 F.A.B.R.I.C, “Stitch” – INFLUX 7: Tempe Public Art – Tempe, Arizona
2015 Mesa Arts Center, “Migration,” SPARK! Mesa’s Festival of Creativity – Mesa, Arizona
Scottsdale Waterfront, “Migration,” Canal Convergence 2015: Scottsdale Public Art – Scottsdale, Arizona
2014 Scottsdale Quarter, “Work + Play,” INFLUX: Scottsdale Public Art – Scottsdale, Arizona
Murphy Park, “Fluttering Hearts,” Glendale Public Art Program – Glendale, Arizona
2012 Civic Center Library, INFLUX: Scottsdale Public Art with Scottsdale’s 100+ Journals Exhibit – Scottsdale, Arizona
Relevant Work Experience
2012- Adjunct Faculty, Textiles 277, and Foundation Drawing I, II & III, Phoenix College – Phoenix, Arizona
2012- Adjunct Faculty, Foundation Drawing I, II & III, Paradise Valley Community College – Phoenix, Arizona
2005-2017 Co-founder and Director of the Taliesin Artist Residency Program (TARP) at Taliesin and Taliesin
West – Spring Green, WI and Scottsdale, Arizona
Education
2004 MFA – School of Visual Arts – New York, New York
2000 BFA in Painting – Summa Cum Laude – Arizona State University – Tempe, Arizona
Awards + Honors
2019 Arizona Commission on the Arts with funding from the Newton and Betty Rosenzweig Fund for the Arts, Research and Development Grant Award – Phoenix, Arizona
2018 ArtPrize Artist Seed Grant funded by the Frey Foundation – Grand Rapids, Michigan
ArtPrize 10 Public Vote Finalist – Installation category for “Cacerolazo” – Grand Rapids, Michigan
2015 Arlene and Morton Scult Contemporary Forum Artist Award, Phoenix Art Museum – Phoenix, Arizona
2011 Tucson Museum of Art Merit Award, Arizona Biennial – Tucson, Arizona
2010 Arizona Commission on the Arts, Artist Project Grant – Phoenix, Arizona
2009 Contemporary Forum of The Phoenix Art Museum, Artist Grant – Phoenix, Arizona
2005 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Fellowship Award – Skowhegan, Maine
Selected Lectures + Panels
2018 Guest Panelist/Podcast Interview by The Jealous Curator, Danielle Krysa, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art – Scottsdale, Arizona
2016 Featured Speaker, A Geography of Line, Phoenix Art Museum – Phoenix, Arizona
Guest Panelist, Fires of Change, The University of Arizona Museum of Art – Tucson, Arizona
2013 Guest Speaker, Art World, Department of Visual Arts, California State University, Fullerton – California
2010 Featured Speaker, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2006 Guest Speaker, Entre Muros, Museo del Pueblo – Guanajuato Capitál, Mexico
2005 Featured Speaker, Colorado State University School of Art – Fort Collins, Colorado
Residencies + Additional Education
2014 Fires of Change Project – North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona (Sponsors: Southwest Fire Science
Consortium, Landscape Conservation Initiative, and National Endowment for the Arts).
2013 Grand Central Art Center, California State Univ. Fullerton, Artist Residency, Santa Ana, California
2010 Artist Studio Project 2010, Residency at Optima – Scottsdale, Arizona
2008 Creative Capital Professional Development Workshop Participant – Tucson, Arizona
2005 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Residency – Skowhegan, Maine
UTD/South Side Artist Residency – Dallas, Texas
Selected Publications + Media
Jennifer McCabe, “Counter-Landscapes: Performative Actions from the 1970 – Now” Exhibition Catalog, SMoCA, 2021
Lauren O’Connell (Juror), New America Paintings No. 156., Pgs. 84-87, The Open Studios Press, Oct/Nov 2021
Lauren Tresp, “Bodies//Boundaries,” Southwest Contemporary, Vol. 1, Spring, 2021
Danielle Krysa, “A Big Important Artist,” Philadelphia: Running Press, 2019
Kenneth Steinbach, “Creative Practices for Visual Artists: Time, Space, Process,” New York: Routledge, 2018
Lauren Haynes, “SVA x Skowhegan” Exhibition Catalog, Visual Arts Press, Ltd., 2017
Lynn Trimble, “The Making of Saskia Jordá’s ‘Geography of Line’ at Phoenix Art Museum,” The Phoenix New Times, 05.10.2016
Matthew Irwin, “High Desert Test Sites,” Frieze Magazine, Issue 161, 05.03.14
Christina Noble, “Cartograms of Memory,” Landscape – Forward 111, American Institute of Architects, Spring 2011