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Ana Gadish-Linares
Ana Gadish-Linares
BIO
Ana Gadish-Linares is a first-generation Cuban-American artist currently residing in the East Bay area in California. She began her formal arts education at the University of Florida, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts with a minor in Art History. The university and the city of Gainesville, FL provided several exhibition opportunities for the emerging artist including a show titled “Memento Mori,” a city-wide juried exhibition at the Hippodrome, and annual events hosted by the university’s art department, such as the “Art Bash” arts festival.
Ana continued her education at Boston University and earned a Master of Science degree in Arts Administration from Boston University in 2014. In the years she spent studying creative businesses and cultural entrepreneurship, Ana created several original brands: ARTESANA Studios, ARTESANA collage, Signature Patterns, Floriography Tarot, and Lucky Elephant by Ana.
Ana is now living in California and she continues to work as a practicing artist and freelance graphic designer. Her work can be found all over the US, in homes and in galleries including the Cederberg Art Museum, Envision Arts, Knox Contemporary Gallery of Art, Las Lagunas Gallery, and the Contemporary Art Gallery Online. Since 2020, Ana has won two Best in Show awards as well as two Honorable Mentions, a Special Merit Award, and two Special Recognition Awards for her art and photography.
STATEMENT
The inspiration for much of my art lies in my personal journey of cultural identity as a first-generation Cuban-American raised in a family of Cuban refugees. In my mind, Cuba was this mythical land that we loved but also resented, as it bore my ancestors for generations but also represented a painful and traumatic exile. My art began as an investigation about my past and the lives of people I've never met, my genetic predecessors, whose strength I desperately sought within my own genes. Through the creative process, I work to understand my cultural identity, gender roles, mental illness, intergenerational trauma, and intergenerational resilience. In continuing this investigation, I found connections between these people and myself, if nothing else than in the fact that we all possess the capacity to survive. Through my art, I use my cultural past to understand and define the present, such as my individual tendencies, fears, preferences, struggles, and convictions.
Victorian Outlaw 2020 represents all women, armed with a roll of voting stickers and a medical face mask in the seemingly lawless dystopia of America in the year 2020 (only 100 years after women fought for, and won, the right to vote). With this piece, I am daring to represent myself, an unassuming petite Cuban-American introvert trying to survive the year 2020, in this same classical aesthetic that demands as much respect and reverence as a portrait of a European noble.
Victorian Outlaw 2020
Victorian Outlaw 2020 represents all women, armed with a roll of voting stickers and a medical face mask in the seemingly lawless dystopia of America in the year 2020 (only 100 years after women fought for, and won, the right to vote).
Ana Gadish-Linares
first-generation Cuban-American