In her works, Santiago portrays semi-autobiographical scenes of everyday life, rejecting the grandiose in lieu of the mundane, surely a contemporary nod to 17th-century Dutch genre painting. The non-heroic characters in her works are embedded in the throes of domestic mundanity, even when those characters are marginalized or seemingly absent. But these prosaic personal depictions do not exist solely on the surface. Instead, the artist invites the viewer to explore deeper narrative layers, divulging a moodier undercurrent of universal grief, humor, and selfless devotion.
Exhibition Dates: August 16 – October 8, 2021
I paint the commonplace objects that surround me, loosely suggesting my internal and familial narratives, resulting in domestic scenes with simple yet layered story-lines. And while narrative is definitely an important driving force in my work, it always remains subservient to the larger formal concerns. To this end, I may run through several narratives in the course of any one painting, in a sense, finding my subject through the process.