"Visual Noise: The Politics of Sound and Style in Shizu Saldamando’s Art"

• In Event: Visual Noise, Vato Love, Chicano Heels: Distortions of Queer Latine/Chicane Aesthetic at the Edge

Abstract

In Shizu Saldamando’s “Mina With Palms” (2022), a large wooden panel features Mina sitting on a gold metallic bench. Her sharp-winged eyeliner and lip liner accentuate her gaze, directly confronting the viewer. Mina is wearing black baggy pants, a large cross necklace, and a torn fishnet shirt under what appears to be a white tube top embellished with a Nausea patch held in place by a safety pin. Saldamando’s gentle strokes in portraits of everyday intimacy evoke a sensory resonance of punk. Her work captures the intersection of cultural spheres, reflecting nuanced identities through detailed depictions of friendships and community. This paper analyzes the visual work of artist Shizu Saldamando to explore how punk serves as a sonic counterpart to the visual aesthetics of punks in Los Angeles. Scholars such as Michelle Habel-Pallan and Marci R. McMahon (2011) have traced the connections between punk, sound, and fashion through the avant-garde art collective ASCO. Habel-Pallan (2011) focuses on Theresa Covarrubias from the legendary East LA punk band The Brat demonstrating how merging fashion styles create a “punkified version of homeboy and homegirl aesthetics.” McMahon (2011) explores Patssi Valdez’s use of glamour and punk aesthetics as a form of “self-fashioning practices” that subvert and reimagine cultural norms of gender, race, and sexuality for Chicanas. This paper contributes to the legacy of racialized punks and the ongoing dialogue between visual art and sound, addressing material experiences and practices that defy assimilation. Additionally, this paper argues that visual noise or the powerful feedback loop between what is seen (fashion) and heard (punk) in Saldamando’s work not only captures the sonic political refusals of punk but more so moments of recognition that this political moment (end of U.S. empire) demands, thus, reminding us of fashion’s potential to amplify collective defiance of fading hegemonic power, signal solidarity, creating a sense of mutual recognition and community.

Author

• Audrey Silvestre, Northwestern University