As a print-based studio artist, Jonathan Herrera Soto approaches printmaking as an act of love through the gesture of translation. He visually articulates relationships between collective memory and historical instances of state-sponsored violence inflicted on politicized bodies by constructing print-based work that echo the lived experiences of those who are no longer with us. The layered process of printmaking reckons with displacing information thereby rendering knowledge autonomous from its original confinements. By repositioning the subject in the world and in history, Herrera Soto constructs visual material from what is lost, creating presence out of disappearance. The print-based process, such as slicing open wounds into wood, burning the surface of lithostone with acid, and the crushing of ink on paper under immense pressure, re-animates the content by symbolically revealing the act of remembering in producing tracings and impressions.
Jonathan Herrera Soto graduated with a BFA from the Minneapolis College in Art and Design in 2017. Recent solo exhibitions of Herrera Soto’s work include “In Between / Underneath” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, “Querida Presencia” at the Duluth Art Institute, and “Entre Rios y Montañas” at the Annex Gallery in Chicago. He has participated in numerous artist residencies, some of which include Kala Art Institute, CA; Yaddo, NY; Santa Fe Art Institute, NM; Highpoint Center for Printmaking, MN; and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, NE. His work was recently featured in BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, among other publications. Herrera Soto is a recipient of the Santo Foundation Individual Artist Award (2018), Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant (2018), Metro Regional Arts Council Next Step Grant (2019), Brown University Artist Initiative Grant (2020), and is a current 2019-2021 Jerome Hill Artist Grant fellow.
Email: jonathanherrerastudio@gmail.com
Instagram: @produce.work
Biography photo taken by Sarah Brahim
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