Angela Maree Sáenz is a Salvadoran-American artist with roots born in Omaha, Nebraska. She previously spent the past decade in Portland, OR, where she received her BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (2018). Most recently she has traveled throughout hispanic speaking countries in order to reconnect with her cultural identity. She intends to continue her rendezvous between Mexico, El Salvador, and Spain in the years to come.
Sáenz's multidisciplinary practice spans drawing, painting, printmaking, and digital tools to connect themes of love, identity, language, and self-determination through process and material. She is inspired by storytelling modules, art history, psychology, nature, and personal histories with grief and transformation. The idea of the malleable self, whether painted through depictions of friends, still lifes, visual poetry, safe spaces, and internal landscapes, is a recurring theme in her work that allows her to reinterpret and question the world(s) she inhabits.
In 2023, Sáenz was awarded the Art3C grant to produce her most recent project Give Me One Last Chorus (2023-2024). Additionally she is part of Maracuya Con Leche alongside Laura Camila Medina, where together they have participated in residence at the Independent Publishing Resource Center (2020) and Caldera Arts (2022). She has also participated in residence with Living School of Art (2020), and most recently at Pocoapoco in Oaxaca, MX (2024). Sáenz has exhibited work in Portland, OR at Wieden+Kennedy, Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, and Marie Watt Studio.
CV︎
Give Me One Last Chorus
In Give Me One Last Chorus, Angela Maree Sáenz presents a series of etchings through the digital landscape of a rendered video installation.
The setting created is immediately eerie and otherworldly; situated atop a staggering high plateau. Here, six bare trees stand in a circle, spindly tall and each displaying a mounted print on paper. The words, “you don’t have to…. you don’t have to…. take it,” sing, echoing and repeating in a piercing pitch mirroring the sharp, dagger-like shadows cast from the branches overhead.
The series of prints are examined in a clockwise fashion, as though reading a book wherein you must walk to each page. In magenta ink, they depict a young feminine body, naked and winged. The sound of swords clashing intensifies as the imagery of the prints arcs through a narrative of lovership and pain.
Through the sharp printmaking process of etching into metal, Sáenz gazes into the darkest and most potent feelings of loss. The creatures of the story are both maleficent and angelic, innocent and capable of bloodshed. The titles of each print are incisive. Sáenz agreed, sharing that the titles preceded the work itself in the form of a brief writing, seemingly scribbled in direct transmission.
The video’s resulting chorus of word, imagery, and sound enact a ceremony of rectification through witness. It is also worth noting that the combination of mediums used is a departure for the artist who typically works in oil paint. In this way, Give Me One Last Chorus, signals a courageous and exposed entry into new worlds. The artist is armed with weapons of clarity and distinct selfhood.
The setting created is immediately eerie and otherworldly; situated atop a staggering high plateau. Here, six bare trees stand in a circle, spindly tall and each displaying a mounted print on paper. The words, “you don’t have to…. you don’t have to…. take it,” sing, echoing and repeating in a piercing pitch mirroring the sharp, dagger-like shadows cast from the branches overhead.
The series of prints are examined in a clockwise fashion, as though reading a book wherein you must walk to each page. In magenta ink, they depict a young feminine body, naked and winged. The sound of swords clashing intensifies as the imagery of the prints arcs through a narrative of lovership and pain.
Through the sharp printmaking process of etching into metal, Sáenz gazes into the darkest and most potent feelings of loss. The creatures of the story are both maleficent and angelic, innocent and capable of bloodshed. The titles of each print are incisive. Sáenz agreed, sharing that the titles preceded the work itself in the form of a brief writing, seemingly scribbled in direct transmission.
The video’s resulting chorus of word, imagery, and sound enact a ceremony of rectification through witness. It is also worth noting that the combination of mediums used is a departure for the artist who typically works in oil paint. In this way, Give Me One Last Chorus, signals a courageous and exposed entry into new worlds. The artist is armed with weapons of clarity and distinct selfhood.
Written by Ahnika Wood
Angela Maree Saenz
Give Me One Last Chorus, 2023
Six dry point images
Printed on Somerset 300 gram
Editioned in collaboration with
Alejandra Arias Sevilla
Angela Maree Saenz
Give Me One Last Chorus, 2024
Video Installation
Produced in collaboration with
Brady Cundall
Funded by the Art3C grant through the Regional Arts and Culture Council
I’d Prefer Not To
Group ExhibitionMarie Watt Studio
On View, July 14, 2023
Flyer created by Olivia Faith Harwood
Photos courtesy of Kevin McConnell
Marie Watt Studio presents I’d Prefer Not To, a pop-up gallery show featuring artworks from Angela Saenz, Amy Hunter, Dakotah Fitzugh, Isabella Saavedra, Olivia Harwood, and Victoria Xiao.
I’d Prefer Not To is a collaborative project that extends far beyond a single night. At the heart, we are a group of artists that formed a friendship while working at Marie Watt Studio. As we worked on projects together as studio assistants, the conversations we generated while sitting around a table revealed shared hopes, dreams, and fears. In many ways, this exhibition is a reflection of us, our connection, and our realities that have been deeply informed by the current events happening in our world.
In I’d Prefer Not To, artists investigate realms of disillusionment and the conflicting internal and external realities within our existing positionality. What results is an exploration of rage, comfort, and containment. Artists examine how personal and collective memories shape our identities, and confront the discomfort and resistance that arise when we reject the passive acceptance of circumstances beyond our control.
I’d Prefer Not To is a collaborative project that extends far beyond a single night. At the heart, we are a group of artists that formed a friendship while working at Marie Watt Studio. As we worked on projects together as studio assistants, the conversations we generated while sitting around a table revealed shared hopes, dreams, and fears. In many ways, this exhibition is a reflection of us, our connection, and our realities that have been deeply informed by the current events happening in our world.
In I’d Prefer Not To, artists investigate realms of disillusionment and the conflicting internal and external realities within our existing positionality. What results is an exploration of rage, comfort, and containment. Artists examine how personal and collective memories shape our identities, and confront the discomfort and resistance that arise when we reject the passive acceptance of circumstances beyond our control.
Written by Victoria Xi
Works on View
Works on View
Mirror Mirror, Mira Mira
Laura Camila Medina and Angela Maree SaenzCurated by Luiza Lukova
Opening Night, January 8, 2022
On View, January 8 - 30, 2022
Flyer created by Angela Maree Saenz
Photos courtesy of Mario Gallucci
In Mirror Mirror, Mira Mira, Portland-based artists Laura Camila Medina and Angela Maree Saenz present a compelling suite of unrealeased paintings, drawings and monotype prints that inspire conversation around community, care and connection. Medina’s otherworldly watercolor illustrations depict anthropomorphic qualities - a face, a body, a hand - that help situate the image while also transporting viewers to a magical, indistinct space entirely of her crafting. In turn, Saenz’s honest and vibrant oil on canvas portraits instantly place viewers within a comfortable frame of intimacy, evading hyper-realism with their freeform, monochromatic backgrounds and stylized brush strokes. Seperately and in tandem, the artists present viewers world-building techniques that create meaningful naratives meant to reimagine and question the world they inhabit.
Medina and Saenz harness a power of transformation with these pieces that reflects inwards, pulling from intimate thoughts and emotions, and outwards, hoping to channel a similar self within their audience. They imply the familiar manner in which faces, objects, and patterns can transport the gallery-goer to a dreamlike place and state. The works seem to ask, how do we all relate? What might be possible if we experienced no barriers or obstacles to our personal dreams?
Written by Luiza Lukova
Medina and Saenz harness a power of transformation with these pieces that reflects inwards, pulling from intimate thoughts and emotions, and outwards, hoping to channel a similar self within their audience. They imply the familiar manner in which faces, objects, and patterns can transport the gallery-goer to a dreamlike place and state. The works seem to ask, how do we all relate? What might be possible if we experienced no barriers or obstacles to our personal dreams?
Written by Luiza Lukova
Works on View
Works on View
Hard Feelings
Solo Exhibition
Solo Exhibition
Opening Night, October 7, 2021
On View, October 7 - November 15, 2021
PGE Gallery at The Armory, Portland Center Stage
Photos Courtesy of Mario Gallucci
Funded in part by the Oregon Arts Commission
Hard Feelings was born out of the artist’s concern with the lack of physical and intimate human connection onset by pandemic procedures. The works in the exhibition speak to the potentiality of healing and transformation that could take place when present with a friend, gazing softly at flowers, and crafting atmospheric and dream-like experiences. Painted with a variety of colors, textures, and viscosities Sáenz expresses to viewers that we are complex nuanced beings, navigating different color fields and temporal states.