Shari Paladino, Spring 19

Shari Paladino, an interdisciplinary artist who predominantly works in installation, combining wood sculpture, textiles, writing, performance & social engagement, with photography and video. Raised in both Chicago and Los Angeles, she has been living and working as an artist and designer in the Bay Area for almost a decade. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Field Studies with an emphasis on Critical Disability Studies, and an MFA 2017, both from UC Berkeley. Her most recent and ongoing work considers visual culture and storytelling, and the production of the white imaginary in her uncozy Habitas. The Habitas is elaborately designed performance set with fabricated props, to backdrop her experimental script Dark Italian Recipe, inspired by late 70’s & 80’s era family situational comedies. Dark Italian Recipe is a semi-autobiographical text transcribed and adapted from an episode of the radio series This American Life’s retelling the hidden paternity story of the artists biracial brother, performing the shifting, unreliable functions of memory and nostalgia in the production white imaginary. Shari’s research and interests include the boundaries of fiction and the sub textual narratives of food, race, heritage, authenticity, and media culture as they intersect with the domestic, designed and technologically mediated visual culture. Shari has exhibited throughout the Bay Area, including the Richmond Center for The Arts, and assisting Amanda Eicher in a recent project Can We Talk About Art for the Department of Public Dialogue at SFMOMA. Shari is a recipient of the 2016 Eisner Prize for Creative Achievement. She has been an Artists in Residence at Jacobs Institure of Design and Technology 2016-17. She is currently a UC Berkeley Teaching and Learning Center Lecturer Fellow 2018-19.