WORKROOM 2024 Resident Artist Spotlight: Fiorella Hilda Gomez Bermudez

 In The CAPE Blog, WORKROOM

Fiorella Hilda Gomez Bermudez is Peruvian multidisciplinary artist and educator based in Wheaton, Illinois. Through performance and the re-activation of recycled materials, her work explores the complexities of migration, belonging and colorism within the Latinx community. Gomez manipulates alternative materials such as plastic, dry flowers and trash, to build sculptures, installations and fiber objects that imagine the immigrant’s journey within the United States. 

Fiorella’s work has been shown in several national and international galleries and institutions, including Biblioteca Nacional del Peru, Blanden Memorial Museum, Triton Art Gallery and The School of the Art Institute. Gomez was the recipient of a Dean’s Grant and the Anna McMaster Memorial Scholarship while she completed her Bachelors of Fine Arts with emphasis on Art Education (BFAAE) at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. 

During WORKROOM, Fiorella is working on developing the project Learning: Records & Transformations, investigating “how to generate art from discarded materials by looking into art objects, systems of value and memories.” In her teaching artist practice, Fiorella collects discarded materials to create new artworks from them. 

“My teaching practice is a big part of my artistic practice. I am a big advocate for Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) and my classroom is a TAB, Choice Based Classroom. This pedagogy gives students/artists choices and is closely aligned with the Studio Habits of mind.”

Fiorella is art teacher at Black Hawk Elementary in Glendale Heights, IL. This images if of her classroom where students are working close to the centers/studio spaces.

“I catalog these ignored materials while exploring what memories they hold from the art process. Investigating the process of this everyday object’s transformation. For example, lately I have been using wood shavings from pencils as embellishments for my embroidery pieces generating a new work of art from what seems to be a remnant.”

Making connections to her arts integration practice as a teaching artist, Fiorella mentions how she exposes her students to social political art movements that challenge the distinction between high art and low art. “As a teaching artist, my goal is to make art accessible to my students by inspiring them to make art from everyday objects, while engaging them in critical conversations about what we see as valuable in our society.”

“My work combines performance and fiber art. I explore the personal to evoke the political. My identity as an immigrant, Latinx mother, and service industry worker, has enabled me to explore race, language, migration, colorism, undocumented immigrant labor, resistance, otherness, dis-belonging, and subcultures. I address these themes by creating installations, fiber pieces, guerilla occupations, and performances. These interventions aim to excavate questions about who we are and where we belong. 

My materials are a combination of recycled materials, collected ephemera, and low-priced art materials. To me, meaning is found in materiality. I set out to remove the line between high art and low art. My work is inspired by the Art Povera movement in Italy, which advocates the use of everyday materials to disrupt the monetary value put on art. Furthermore, this movement explores the possibility of freeing people from ideologies and preconceptions, which I practice by deconstructing identities imposed on underrepresented groups by the dominant culture.”

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