By Sophie He – HelloGiggles.com – Photo courtesy Gabriella Sanchez.
Much of Sanchez’s work centers around the tension of duality, or what she calls “straddling the line”: the line between Chicano and American, personal and universal, the artist and the audience. Sanchez negotiates her place between these two worlds by incorporating disparate elements from one side — sign paintings throughout the downtown area, scenes from family photos, her own signature color palette — with the formal techniques she learned as a Fine Arts major. She prompts the audience to code-switch alongside her, forcing them to think about their own assumptions.
