About
Foster Santiago is a visual artist and drawing instructor based in Baltimore, Maryland. He received his BFA in Kinetic Imaging from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in Intermedia Digital Arts at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where he also teaches foundational Drawing. Foster’s work focuses on his identity as a transgender man, as well as the colors and textures of Puerto Rico. His art acts as a connection between his ethnic heritage and the euphoria he experiences through his transness. He is especially interested in bright colors, mixed media, dreamscapes, and magical realism.
Statement
I make colorful interdisciplinary work involving painting, drawing, video, fibers, and installation to reference a mix of Latinx and Transgender futurism. In exploring this combination, I imagine my body in new worlds and extraordinary relationships, visualizing invisible energies of love towards the island and my body into reflections of maximalist Puerto Rican Landscapes. It is important that I see myself in re-imaginings of Puerto Rico because the core of my work is about remembering the divinity of Transgender people, and believing that there is history of our glory evident in physical forms throughout the island. I define the evidence of our generational spirit and flourishing existence as Transgender Euphoria.
Transgender Euphoria: the understanding that you are exalted in the form your body takes.
Facets of a trans existence can be embodied through imagery that encompasses vast color combinations, textures, movements, sounds and found objects. There are many ways in which these fragments of euphoria are seen, and mine are found through examining the culture, aesthetics, and spirits of Puerto Rico. I hope that through depicting and archiving these moments of textured, bright, abstracted Transgender Euphoria, I’m inviting myself back to an island that at first glance, seems not to remember me.
All content copyright Foster Santiago