About & Contact
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Jo Lacangan (they/she he, b. 2003 in San Diego, CA) is a Filipino-American artist based in California. They work in drawing, painting, photo, video, and installation. They work with content based on personal experiences of moving through different communities, having to think about compromising or showing authenticity. Striving to change the world, they admit that the struggle in changing the world is the ability to change oneself. Use of self-portaiture in their work is to show vulnerability and undo ideas that we must walk with our best foot forward and with perfection in order to exist.
They received their B.A. in Art with Departmental Honors at University of California, Irvine and are currently an MFA at California State University, Los Angeles. They have shown in institutions such as Material Projects LA, UCLA New Wight Gallery, and University Art Galleries.
In practice, personal history and cultural signifiers are prioritized. Videos are fragmented narratives incorporating my lived experiences. Photography is used for audiences to weave a narrative together for themselves. Their paintings and drawings use gestural markings and strokes as well as flat color rendering to express intensity of emotions. In performances, they occupy a liminal space, combining visual temporalities and entropy. Their installations display intimacy or monumentality of emotions through scale. To guide themselves and the viewer into the imagery, poetic text is occasionally used Every medium has an effect that I would need to utilize in order to tell my story.
There is an intention not to tell a person how to think, but to consider another person’s shoes, another future, another perspective, another world.
They aim to pursue a career in higher education as a professor of art where the goal would be to work with college admission outreach programs to show young, arts-inclined students that they are capable of receiving an art education and being successful with it. Working in retention efforts is also a goal for them. When students reach the university level, it’s important to make sure they graduate successfully and have a lucrative career aligning with their artistic goals.