BIO

Bio 

Leticia Balzi is an Argentinian-Italian artist based in Norway. She is a doctoral candidate in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. She holds an M.A. in Art Education from New York University (NYU) and an M.F.A. in Artistic Research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She is the World European Councilor for InSEA and is also part of the Publication Board for this organization. Her artistic research work and publications as an artist examine the role of politics in aesthetics, intersectionality the environment, and critical pedagogy. She is part of Rotvollkunstnerkollektiv in Trondheim. She also works as a visual art & design teacher at middle school at Fagerhaug International School. As an educator, she uses the visual arts with middle and high school students to discuss issues of social justice and its intersections with culturally relevant pedagogy. She has participated in several exhibitions and congresses in Norway, Spain, Germany, the US, and Argentina. She was an educator and artist in multiple educational settings and worked as a creative director in advertising in Buenos Aires for over ten years. She is a Fulbright recipient in New York and was awarded the Kulturrådet Kunstnerstipend. 

ART PRAXIS STATEMENT

I work in the field of contemporary art and education, exploring themes such as intersectionality, the environment, and visual culture. My goal is to use art to initiate conversations, promote social inclusion and raise awareness of environmental issues. To achieve this, I utilize visual art, installations, artistic research, and educational methods to address different cultural contexts and personal narratives. My inspiration comes from various sources, including history, affect theories, archive images, territories, and personal and collective experiences. One of my recent projects involved examining the politics of women's body representation in Western visual arts histories, advertising, and video games, using archive images. Through this work, I aim to challenge viewers' assumptions about women throughout history. Currently, I am working on a project that examines how intersectional discrimination has impacted the bodies of students aged fourteen and fifteen. This project takes the form of critical comic zines and explores the historical effects of discrimination on these young individuals from a performative critical auto-ethnographic perspective.