SHIZU SALDAMANDO

The East L.A.-based, San Francisco-born Japanese Mexican artist Saldamando has spent the last two decades creating intimate portraits of friends, artists, activists and others in L.A.’s Latino community. One of her portraits features performance and installation artist rafa esparza, a close friend, in profile; his arm tattoo, “Mi Unico Amor,” is featured prominently. In another piece, painter Patrick Martinez, who helped nurture Saldamando’s career, is pictured wearing a Dodgers cap in his Highland Park backyard, lush vines dangling around him. Individually, the portraits address disparate identities and subcultures. Together they converge into a handrendered archive documenting generations of Latino creatives. Saldamando, who also works with mixed media, sculpture, video and tattoo art, among other mediums, has shown at the likes of 2008’s “Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the National Portrait Gallery. — D.V.