ARTIST STATMENT

Tania Bilbao is a visual artist working across a variety of media including acrylic, oils, ink, wearable art and any other material that manages to spark her sense of creative intrigue. While earnestly asking questions surrounding meaning and direction within one’s life, her work carries a rich, nostalgic feel that maintains a warm approachability. All of her imagery radiates a love for the artistic impulse, and she constantly strives to produce relatable work centered on universal messages that stimulate dialogue with her audience.

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Visual motifs actively play through Bilbao’s work, and this is true for the ideas she is contemplating. As the world around her fluctuates and changes, this influences her ideas as well, thus manifesting onto the canvas as a fusion that is uniquely her. A renewal during the course of her unique life journey informed the messages she seeks to relay. Experience as a DJ coupled with a background in Communications lead her to a career within the pro audio industry as an executive director. This motivated the formation of her own company, Gruuvn-Arts, LLC: an ideal intermingling of her visual art, music, and entertainment backgrounds. She is enthralled with exploring how choices affect one’s trajectory, as well as the role chance plays in this regard. These concepts unfold in the lives of each viewer, who can relate based upon their own past experiences and form distinct connections. Embodying fearlessness and boldness in the face of adversity is important to Bilbao, and she hopes to encourage this in the lives of those who engage with her work as well.

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Bilbao’s sense of humor inevitably seeps into what she produces, and tools such as wordplay and wit regularly make an appearance. While foregoing any singular style, her deep connection with music influences the emotional way in which she produces art, manifesting as a retro aesthetic often characterized by an aged-quality she achieves through manipulation of a medium. As an interdisciplinary maker concerned with chance and choice, experimentation plays a key role in her practice. This has led her to uncover new possibilities by revisiting certain media and incorporating aspects of one process into another, allowing the outcome to inform the overall direction. The habits of each medium and these discoveries facilitate her decisions for every piece as she ultimately seeks to use that which will best serve the final image. Bilbao never allows herself to pursue one mode of creating, but instead challenges herself to unlock new approaches that are always authentic to her ever-evolving practice.