Victoria Maldonado has always been interested in the beauty of painting her whole life and would spend her childhood watching cartoons and recreating them with her own drawing style.
Maldonado’s father was the biggest influential person in her life, he impacted her with all what he knows about being a construction painter and what it really means to be a painter.
“My work before was more about loss and how I was coping with my dad’s loss, but now I feel that I have expanded my work about other things,” Maldonado said.
Being an introvert, Maldonado learned that being an artist is all about sharing about one’s own experiences and history through their art. Through her paintings, she became open to express herself.
Maldonado has explored beyond her traditional work and reached out with what’s going on more in the world.
“My work is really about identity policies, political climate, just basically figuring out what is a queers person identity,” Maldonado explained.
Right now in her current practice, Maldonado is making a statement with her work and wishes for the public to understand the story from what her work is portraying.
“Much of her work focuses on social political content,” Trevor Norris, the art gallery director said.
One of Maldonado paintings comes with a figure of a man wearing a shirt saying, “Abolish ICE” with his arms holding a child and on his arm, “Families Belong Together.”
The art piece represents a time where Maldonado found an old picture of her dad holding her cousin.
“For me the whole point was to see like the most intimate part of families, so for me that was such a compelling image,” Maldonado said.
Her art also reflects in identity policies such as queer and mainly trying to figure out what is a person’s queer identity and where do they stand in the political spectrum.
Maldonado has people within her circle who have faith and support her throughout every step of the way through this journey of her art career.
“I would say her work comes from the TOC queer latinx women, a lot of her work is coming from identity and how they navigate within the world and touch bases on the LGBTQ,” Vanessa Olivarez, a friend and supporter of Maldonado’s said.
Maldonado is one of many Generational: Local Latinx LGBTQI artists who will be showing some of her art pieces at the Surbiennial Art Exhibition at Long Beach City College on September 19.