Work by Natalie Romero and Liz Zhang, UVa alumna and the inaugural 2020-2021 Freeman Artists in Residence, housed at Visible Records. The exhibiton is a culmination of work undertaken over the course of their 12 month residency.
Natalie Romero (she/her) is a queer Latina printmaker and artist from Houston, currently based in Charlottesville, Virginia. She studied Global Development Studies and Sociology at the University of Virginia with a focus on U.S. intervention in Latin America. Romero is passionate about bringing communities and families together through relational organizing and artistic expression. Screen printing, painting and poetry are tools that she uses to show others that creation can be empowering, affordable and locally sourced. She believes that sharing movement, music, earth, and lived experience are modes of liberation and community building. Romero’s work inspires reflection to discuss trauma, generational healing, insecurities, and societal issues. Romero uses her art to process and unpack the stigmas and norms surrounding body, beauty, responsibility, community and the environment.
Liz Zhang is a painter and printmaker based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her work is characterized by the use of figures to explore isolation, alliance, community, and coexistence. She seeks to create implied narrative through the subtle interactions of figures within their environments, playing with gestural languages of the body and utilitarian languages of human-made structures. She draws inspiration from moments of work, play, sport, and ceremony as well as family stories that have been passed down to her, which range from mundane anecdotes of the home to the revolutionary politics of twentieth century China. She was born and raised in Yorktown, Virginia and received her BA in Studio Art from the University of Virginia in 2019. She has shown locally in the Charlottesville area, including a solo show at Welcome Gallery in 2019.