Leticia Bajuyo
Corpus Christi, Texas
June 2-30, 2021
Time for You Residency
Sponsored by the Sustainable Arts Foundation and collectors David Horvitz and Francie Bishop Good
BIO
A Filipinx-American interdisciplinary artist and object maker based in Texas, Leticia R. Bajuyo started creating in rural Midwest flyover communities. Her studio practice involves an interest in unpacking value perceptions, which began in a small town named Metropolis on the border of Illinois and Kentucky. The time and space of quiet landscapes outside and the multi-national dialogues inside her family’s house influenced the development of her critiques of consumer capitalism, fickle domestic desires, and internalized pressures of assimilation.
Bajuyo received her B.F.A. from the University of Notre Dame and her M.F.A. from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In 2017, Bajuyo joined the faculty at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi, where she is an Associate Professor of Art - Sculpture. Prior to this professorship in Texas, she served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Sculpture at the University of Notre Dame and Professor of Art at Hanover College. Her recent solo exhibitions include the Beatrice M. Haggerty Gallery in Dallas, Texas; Beeville Art Museum in Beeville, Texas; Hall Art Gallery at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi; and Rudolph Blume Fine Art / ArtScan Gallery in Houston, Texas. Bajuyo's large-scale, site-specific artworks include creating installations at the From Waste to Art Museum in Baku, Azerbaijan; in the silos of the Site Gallery at Sawyer Yards in Houston, Texas; at the Nashville International Airport in Tennessee; and in the Tony Hillerman Library in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
ARTIST STATEMENT
In my artwork, compassion and empathy fuel my studio production as I combine disparate objects and remnants of past yearnings into drawings, sculptures, and installations. The materials and stories I collect are dusty trophies from a forgotten competition that find space in my studio where I reassess their current silence.
As they migrate from one role to another role in search of belonging, these objects are akin to characters who are in search of an author as I create aesthetic and harmonious visions where everything convincingly fits together in a unified whole. However, the ease and harmony of the surface contains and occasionally reveals the reality of anxiety, pressure, and disappointment within. Crafted to be desirable while being self-reflexively critical, my work fosters discourse about identity and value when these are positioned at the thin line between desire and discard.
In addition to exhibitions of her individual artwork, Bajuyo seeks community and welcomes collaboration by participating in artist collectives:
ENID: Generations of Women Sculptors
ARTIST LINKS
Website: www.bajuyo.com
Instagram: @lbajuyo