I immigrated, running away from a world embroiled in an unending war, and war continues to color my everyday life. In my work, I interpret our immediate environment and the forces shaping our world, both locally and globally. I am concerned in expressing what it is to be human; where the personal journey intersects with political, global and universal realities and beliefs.

— Victor Cartagena

Victor Cartagena—Biography Born 1966, San Salvador, El Salvador Lives and works in San Francisco

Victor Cartagena was born in 1965 in San Salvador, El Salvador, and currently lives and works in San Francisco. In 1985 Cartagena fled El Salvador due to violent civil war and moved to California. As a member of Tamoanchán (a collective of Latin American printmakers) Cartagena received the CAC Fellowship at Berkeley’s KALA Art Institute, sponsored by the California Arts Council. Cartagena has received numerous grants, including Visions from the New California grant, funded by The James Irvine Foundation, 2004; the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Cultural Equity Grant, 2005; the Creative Capital Award, 2009; and the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation Grant, 2011. In the Bay Area, Cartagena has exhibited at the University Art Museum at University of California, Berkeley, Galería de la Raza, Ampersand International Arts, Southern Exposure, the Mission Cultural Center, the Oakland Museum of California, African American Museum and Library, and Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana. In 2006, Cartagena collaborated with Campo Santo and Octavio Solis at Intersection for the Arts.

Internationally, his work has been exhibited in Mexico, Japan, El Salvador, Belarus, Ecuador, and Greece. Cartagena’s work is included in the collections of the Honolulu Museum of Art; Mexican Museum, San Francisco; Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Greece; Oxbow School of Art, California; and the San Jose Museum of Art.

Artist Statement

I grew up in times of war, under the ‘military boot’ and the cassock, under a dictatorship that left behind the painful after-taste of death and disappearance. I have been a witness to wars, invasions and revolutionary movements, cold wars, curfews, walls built and walls demolished. . . I immigrated, running away from a world embroiled in an unending war, and war continues to color my everyday life. Art is the primary tool we use to interpret our immediate environment and the forces shaping our world, both locally and globally. Originally from El Salvador, I have been living in San Francisco since the mid-eighties working in the media of printmaking, painting, drawing, mixed media, installation and set-design. My work has moved from a focus on the political issues in my native land to a broader exploration of the socio-political landscape, including an examination of consumer culture, homelessness, material waste, capital punishment, exile, identity, immigration, and the use of power. I am especially interested in expressing what it is to be human; where the personal journey intersects with political, global and universal realities and beliefs.