Amanda Messina Gerodias is a queer, mixed-race Pinay visual artist based in San Francisco. Her grandparents, her father and his siblings immigrated from Olongapo City, Philippines to San Francisco in the late 1960’s. Her family’s ancestral lands can also be traced to Croatia and Sweden. Informed by her own vulnerabilities as a caregiver amidst the pandemic, she began to explore Filipinx weaving patterns as they offered protection, comfort, precision, hyper-focus and flow. Her work is driven by a desire to reconcile the gaps in her own knowledge of her mixed identities. As keeper of the family photo archive spanning nearly a century, she is often sifting through while asking, where am I in this image and what memories are here for me to connect to? Through her work, she developed paper carving techniques to create texture, transparency and interaction between the different layers of cotton paper and painted surface. All works start with a single piece of heavily weighted watercolor paper. After the composition is decided and paint is laid down, the paper is meticulously cut by hand, part way through, and then pieces are picked away to create the final image.
Amanda has worked as a registered nurse in San Francisco for 16 years. She studied architecture at San Francisco City College and has been building her art practice since 2020. She began to share her work with the public last year and has been included in group shows at Sacramento City Hall, Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Mercury 20 Gallery, Bindlestiff and Bituin Studio in Soma Pilipinas.
