Artist Profile
Zoe Alameda
Born in Kansas City, MO; and based in Los Angeles, CA
Zoe Alameda makes assemblages with a punk-DIY ethos that collapse real life and virtual reality. Dense, raw, and expressive, her wall works derive from and repel against not only the cyber world, but also the painting medium.
Trained as a painter, Alameda started her practice creating canvases based on imagery sourced from the internet. Yet Alameda found that flat pictorial representation was too aligned with the online content that she was portraying. Working to introduce tactility, dimension, and tangibility to both the digital and painting realms, the artist began incorporating found materials into her acrylic depictions of crushed cars, crumbling houses, fragmented bodies, and iPhone graphics. She also collages photographs of tattoos, selfies on social media, anime cartoons, and bumper stickers together with items from her personal surroundings. The artist often frames these compositions with discarded pieces of metal or wood. Alameda rescues such disposable materials from contemporary life, using them to intersect the visuals on her surfaces—evoking a hunger for physical intimacy and authenticity in the midst of digital alienation and excess.
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While receiving a BFA in Fine Arts from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Alameda was selected to participate in the prestigious Yale Norfolk School of Art residency (2022). Her work has been included in exhibitions at Lonestar Studios, Los Angeles, CA (2023) and New Image Art, Los Angeles, CA (2023). Alameda was recently featured as an “Artist of the Week” (January 2023) by the digital publication and artist-run space LVL3, Chicago, IL.
Artist Statement
Zoe Alameda is a multidisciplinary artist whose work investigates the intersection of identity, technology, and personal experience. Combining processes of collage, painting, and sculpture, Alameda expresses a sense of longing for connection and meaning.
Drawing from personal experience and online-sourced material, Alameda's practice is characterized by a sense of abundance and excess. Her works are dense and layered, filled with fragments of images and text that capture the overwhelming and anxiety-inducing nature of contemporary life. By combining different mediums and techniques, she creates a sense of tension and discordance that reflects the complexity of human emotion.
At the heart of Alameda's work is a sense of longing - a desire for connection, meaning, and authenticity. In a world that often feels fragmented and alienating, she creates a sense of intimacy and vulnerability that invites viewers to engage with their own emotions and experiences.