artists

JOHANNA POETHIG
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Johanna Poethig is a visual, public and performance artist who has exhibited internationally and has been actively creating public art works, murals, paintings, sculpture and multi-media installations for over 20 years. She was raised in the Philippines through highschool and has lived in Chicago, San Francisco and Oakland since coming to the United States. She received her BFA at University of California, Santa Cruz and her MFA at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Poethig’s work crosses the private and public realms. Her paintings, sculpture, video and installations reflect her interest in symbol, satire, society and our consumerist culture. She has shown this work at the Togonon Gallery, New Langton Arts, The Luggage Store Gallery, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Bronx Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and The Lab in San Francisco. She produces and participates in performance events that mix feminism, global politics, costume, props, cabaret, experimental music and video. Her video “Barbaric” was recently shown with The Hub at the Dutch Electronic Art Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Her public art works intervene in the urban landscape on public buildings, freeways, in parks, hospitals, schools, homeless shelters, and advertising venues. She has received numerous commissions and awards for this work. Her recent projects include a major mural for downtown Chicago’s loop district, an interior public art work for the new Clark Center in Vancouver ,Washington, the artwork for San Francisco’s new Juvenile Hall and for the historic building renovation for the Milwaukee County Health and Humans Services.

Johanna Poethig is on the faculty of the Institute for Visual and Public Art (VPA) at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB). As an arts educator and community artist she deconstructs traditional "art world" boundaries in a collaborative artistic process grounded in a process of research, production, critique, improvisation and reciprocal learning. As one of CSUMB's pioneer faculty she contributes this experience to VPA's innovative and socially engaged arts program. Her interest in the dialouge between the public and personal, politics and aesthetics, the ridiculous and the sublime and an inclusive cultural life informs her process and inspires her work.