short arms. big work.
Zandra Xōchitl FKA Stratford (b. 1974, Canada) is a LatinX Canadian artist whose attention is snagged by the crunch and grit of urban spaces. As a modernist, she juxtaposes pastel colours with the gorgeous filth of texture, and old collage materials. The result is bold and layered hard-edged abstracts that are aged yet contemporary.
An autodidact, Zandra briefly studied printmaking at the Victoria College of Art, after working as an advertising Art Director for over a decade. She was the only Canadian whose work was selected for the 249th Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in London, where she was also featured in the BBC’s annual documentary about the exhibition. In 2019 she was one of five finalists for Art at the Airport, an initiative of the Victoria International Airport, for which she proposed a 40-foot installation. She is represented in London, UK by After Nyne Contemporary.
She lives and works in Victoria, British Columbia the land of the lək̓ʷəŋən People, known today as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I’m an urban person and what snags my attention as an artist is the crunch and grit of urban spaces – rust and concrete and all the structures which support human stories, and in a way end up telling them. So as I travel I collect references that speak to that accumulation of layers; graffiti painted over and showing through, flyers, the abrasion and interaction that always reveals as it removes and contributes. Slowly a narrative arises out of friction and contact, and I try to do that in my work.
As a modernist I juxtapose pastel colours combined with the gorgeous filth of texture, and old found collage materials, so the result is something that is aged yet contemporary.
Increasingly I’ve been working on larger pieces needing large spaces, and space to back up and observe them. That implies a prescience about display space and architecture which has a lot to do with managing negative space in 3 dimensions. It’s part of the discussion of how systems like buildings or streetscapes tell stories about people and fleeting interactions, and lets me stay with those stories for a while.