Artist Statement
My work reimagines the domestic environment through the lens of a single, immigrant woman navigating life outside traditional expectations. Using materials like bread dough, used bedsheets, discarded furniture, and other materials found within the home, I engage with the intimate spaces women occupy, not as wives or mothers, but as individuals confronting societal norms. These materials—ordinary yet visceral—become symbols of personal labor and introspection, where identity is both constructed and deconstructed within the home.
Bread dough, a central element in my practice, is deeply intertwined with my personal history. Growing up in a traditional Italian immigrant household in Australia where gender roles where clearly in place, I have vivid memories of watching my mother knead dough on our kitchen table, transforming simple ingredients into sustenance. Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject, which explores the unsettling spaces where the self and the ‘other’ blur, resonates deeply in my practice. The abject relates to what is cast aside or repressed, and for me, it mirrors the way women—especially those who defy traditional roles—navigate their existence. In my work, bread dough embodies this push and pull between formation and dissolution, between nurturing and rejecting. The physicality of kneading dough, its transformation from a formless mass into sustenance, reflects the internal and external labor required to continually reshape oneself in a world that often seeks to define and confine women within rigid boundaries. The dough’s inevitable collapse, its expiration, mirrors the emotional cycles of resilience, exhaustion, and the shedding of societal expectations.
My interdisciplinary practice—spanning sculpture, installation, photography and performance—delves into these tensions. It considers the abject not only as something to be expelled but as a source of strength and creation, exploring how the female body and psyche must navigate both personal and cultural abjection. In a society where bodily autonomy and gender roles are deeply contested, I use materials tied to care and sustenance to reflect on the labor of survival—of existing outside prescribed norms, of embracing both the beauty and discomfort of the body, and of redefining what "home" and "domesticity" mean for those who do not follow traditional paths. Through my work, I seek to confront and reveal the resilience and complexity of the female experience in contemporary culture, viewed through the lens of a child of immigrants who has, in turn, become an immigrant in adulthood.
Biography
Santina Amato, born in Melbourne to Italian immigrants and based in the USA since 2010, creates multidisciplinary work spanning sculpture, video, photography, installation, and performance. Her practice explores the female experience and personal identity through materials like bread dough, used bedsheets, and discarded furniture, reimagining the domestic environment from the perspective of a single, immigrant woman. Inspired by her upbringing in a traditional Italian household, she uses these materials to symbolize the emotional labor, resilience, and introspection involved in navigating life outside societal expectations, challenging traditional narratives of the female body and domesticity.
Amato received an MFA (Photography) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was a 2022 AIM Fellow at the Bronx Museum of Art in New York. In 2025, she participated in AIR Gallery 16th Biennale titled I Woke Up Dreaming, Guest Curated by Amant Associate Curator Patricia Margarita Hernández. In 2024, she exhibited and performed at the Sixth AIM Biennale at the Bronx Museum, was a Panellist for the New York State Council on the Art Grant, and a Finalist for the Artist-in-Residence Program at Monira Foundation and the inaugural artist at 1708 Gallery Artist in Residence Pilot Program. In 2023, she received funding from the New York State Council on the Art, the Queens Arts Fund and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She was also a Mentor for the New York Foundation for the Arts, Immigrant Artist Program and Program Director of an Artist-In-Residence Summer Pilot Program at Rockella Space in Queens, New York.
Amato's work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum as part of The Sixth AIM Biennale, Intersect Arts Center, MO, Westbeth Gallery, Field Projects, Springbreak, Here Arts Center, and Governors Island Art Fair in NYC, Samek Art Museum, Bucknell University, PA, The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and MoCA Tucson, AZ. She has received funding from city and state agencies in New York and Illinois, and the Australian Council for the Arts. Her work has been included in publications such as Chicago Artist Writers, Emergency Index , Psychology Tomorrow Magazine, CreateMagazine, and Lenscratch.
In 2018, Amato was named as a Hot Pick Artist by Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, and she has held positions as Fellow and Artist-in-Residence at Saltonstall, NY, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA, MoCA Tucson, AZ, supported by the Illinois Arts Council Agency (IACA), MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA supported by the City of Chicago's DCASE 2018 IAP Grant, Crosstown Arts, Memphis, TN, Process Park, Artslant & Chashama, Pine Plains, NY, BRIC Arts Media, Brooklyn, NY. Amato Founded and Directed Moving_Image_00:00, a biannual festival in Chicago of moving image works by Chicago-based artists from 2016-2019.
Her work is part of a collective photographic portfolio at The Joan Flasch Artist' Book Collection and The Art Institute of Chicago, and video collection at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia and the Samek Art Museum, Lewisburg, PA.
Awards
2025
Artist-in-Residence, Saltonstall, New York, USA
2024
Artist-in-Residence, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, Virginia, USA
2023
Emergency Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, USA
Individual Artist Grant, New York State Council on the Arts, NY, USA
New Work Grant, Queens Arts Fund, NY, USA
Mentor, Immigrant Artist Program, New York Foundation for the Arts, NYC, USA
2022
AIM Fellow, Bronx Museum of Art, NYC, USA
Grant, The Mayer Foundation, NYC, USA
Commission, New York Botanical Gardens, NYC, USA
Artist-in-Residence, 4 Heads Portal, Governors Island, NYC, USA
2021
Artist-in-Residence, 4 Heads Portal, Governors Island, NYC, USA
2020
Artist-in-Residence, Bethany Arts Community, Ossining, NY, USA
2019
Grant, Professional Development, Illinois Arts Council Agency (IACA)
Grant, Individual Artists Program (IAP), City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events (DCASE)
Artist-in-Residence, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ, USA
2018
Hot Pick Artist, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Artist-in-Residence, Process Park, Artslant & Chashama, Pine Plains, NY, USA
Artist-in-Residence, Crosstown Arts Center, Memphis, TN, USA
Artist-in-Residence, MASS MOCA, North Adams, MA, USA
Grant, Illinois Arts Council Agency (IACA) Individual Artist Support Project Grant
Grant, Individual Artists Program (IAP), City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events (DCASE)
2017
Artist-in-Residence, Field/Work (2017/2018), Chicago Artist Coalition (CAC), Chicago, USA
Artist-in-Residence, ACRE (Artists' Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions), Steuben, WI, USA
Writing Fellow, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA
2016
Honorable Mention Award, ExFest 2016 Film/Video Festival, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA
Angela & George Paterakis Scholarship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA
Writing Fellow, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA
2015
Leroy Neiman Scholarship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA
Travel Grant, Ian Potter Cultural Trust Fund, Melbourne, Australia
Artist-in-Residence, Summer Artist Institute, LMCC/ Creative Capital, New York, USA