Santina Amato

Santina Amato was born in Australia to Italian immigrants, and has lived and worked in the USA since 2010. She works in a wide range of mediums and formats from sculpture to live performances and explores the experience of the intimate body. In her work, desire and erotica are translated into a broader consideration of the physical, psychological, and social functions of the female body, through materials such as bread dough and used bedsheets. She also considers and incorporates domestic labour when handling these materials that become signifiers for a personal and intimate space.

Amato is current AIM Fellow at the Bronx Museum of Art in New York and received an MFA (Photography) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2017). In 2023, she will be a Mentor for the New York Foundation for the Arts, Immigrant Artist Program and is the recipient of the 2023 New York State Council on the Arts grant. She plans to use the NYSCA grant to create new portraits in her ongoing series Portraits of Women With Their Weight In Dough.

Her work has been supported by The Illinois Arts Council Agency, the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events and the Australian Council for the Arts among others. Exhibitions and screenings include Samek Art Museum, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL, Here Arts Center, NYC, Governors Island Art Fair, NYC and Detroit International Videonale, Kuntshalle Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art, MI.

Amato has held positions as Fellow and Artist-in-Residence at MOCA Tucson supported by the Illinois Arts Council Agency (IACA), MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA supported by the City of Chicago's DCASE, 2018 IAP Grant, Crosstown Arts, Memphis, TN, Process Park, Artslant & Chashama, Pine Plains, NY, Filed/Work Program, Chicago Artist Coalition, Chicago, IL.  In 2018, she was named as a Smack Mellon, Hot Pick Artist (Brooklyn, NY). Her work has been included in publications such as Chicago Artist Writers, Emergency Index, Psychology Tomorrow Magazine, CreateMagazine, and Lenscratch.

In 2016, Amato Founded and Directed Moving_Image_00:00, a biannual festival in Chicago of moving image works by Chicago-based artists that ran until 2019. Her work is part of a collective photographic portfolio at The Joan Flasch Artist' Book Collection and The Art Institute of Chicago, and video collection at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia and the Samek Art Museum, Lewsiburg, PA.