Artist Bio

Bernardo Diaz is an artist, educator, and administrator who resides in Austin, TX. Diaz received his MFA from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University. A first generation Mexican-American, Diaz was born in Rochelle, Illinois and spent his formative years in Eagle Pass, a southwest Texas town on the border with Mexico. Diaz’s work explores notions of identity and currently works around three formal conceptual frameworks: embellishment, omission, and revision. Diaz is vehemently non-committed to a specific medium and his work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, collages, text, socially-engaged projects, and grassroots organizing. Diaz has also worked alongside various art organizations including the Public Art Selection Committee for the City of Dallas, Art Love Magic, Big Thought, and is a critic for Peripheral Vision Arts, an online art journal focused on emerging artists. In 2013, Diaz was included in the Dallas Pavillion, a tongue-in-cheek exhibition in print that debuted at the 55th Annual Venice Bienneal. In 2014, an essay and selection of Diaz's work was published in Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies at UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center. He currently serves as assistant professor of art and assistant department chair at Austin Community College. Diaz loves his two pet dogs, who he promised to mention in his bio; their names are Trixie and Loki.

Art is not a thing, but a way. We each have our own way and my way is informed by my biography. This biography, in turn, is informed by a set of histories.

These histories are the narrative of everything that came before me, and as such, have manifested in my identity as a border-dwelling, queer, Chicano man. As a consequence of conquest and dominion, these histories are often incomplete or fragmented.

The words and images that make up my personal narrative have been affected by a process of historical revision, omission, and embellishment; a process that results in both concealment and revelation.

My work takes the tools of storytelling, the word and the image, and pushes them through a similar process of revision, omission, and embellishment. This process results in glyph-like objects that conceals an origin and reveals a new hybrid image. To engage in this process is to learn from the process as it emphasizes the power of words and images while simultaneously revealing their fallible nature.

The meaning of the words and images used in each composition has been obscured, inviting the viewer to share in my experience of making sense of what they see before them.

©BernardoDiaz2020