Recent

Artist-in-Residence at Grand Central Art Center. Supported in part by a generous grant to Grand Central Art Center from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. 2022. The first phase of the residency  activates the Storefront Gallery with the project ¡Hola! UMM in Santa Ana.

Participation in 21-hour Zoom performance broadcast to celebrate Linda Montano’s legacy. Organized by Franklin Furnace, Grace Exhibition Space, Streamside 7, Unison Arts, E.A.R.T.H. Lab (Environmental Art, Research, Theory & Happenings, San Francisco), Three Phase Center, and The Interior Beauty Salon.
January 18th-19th, 2022

Residency and exhibition at Transformative Arts for the project ALI to LA, with Edgar Arceneaux, Kendell Carter, April Banks, Manuel Lopez and Veronica de Jesus, curated by jill moniz. In partnership with PBS and the film by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon. Performance on Oct. 2, 2021. KCET feature “7 Artists Take On Muhammad Ali’s Legacy Outside the Ring,” by Jordan Riefe.

Of Warriors and New Kinships, new digital work included in the Every Woman Biennial, London/New York, June/July 2021, and in Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, “Inner/Outer Exile in Contemporary Venezuelan Art,” Review 103: Literature and Arts of the Americas, País Portátil: Contemporary Venezuelan Writing and Art, guest-edited by Javier Guerrero (Routledge, The City College of New York, 2022).

New solo work on The Hoosac Institute Journal #7, a wondrous interdisciplinary project curated by Jenny Perlin.

Work acquired by the Stiftung Konzeptuelle Kunst, Germany, Oct 2020.

Equal Rights (ER) Guide, a participatory mapping project released by the Unconfirmed Makeshift Museum (UMM), September 2020.

Residency at the Kodokan Judo Institute, Tokyo, Japan. Supported by a Hoff Family Foundation grant. November-December, 2019.

Infinite Unbalancing Directions, a performative installation. SUR: Biennial, part of the section titled Southern Geometries: Contemporary Non-Objective Art curated by James MacDevitt at Cerritos College Art Gallery. August 26 – October 4, 2019.

The Pink Elephant in the Room Disrupts Patterns with a Mix of Stubbornness and Unapologetic Didacticism / El Elefante Rosado en la Habitación Interrumpe Patrones con una Mezcla de Testarudez y Didactismo Impenintente. In  These Creatures, at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Cindy Rehm. September 9 – November 23, 2019.

Presentation at “Martial Arts, Culture and Politics,” 5th Annual Martial Arts Studies Conference, Chapman University, May 23-24, 2019. Organized by Paul Bowman (Cardiff University) and Andrea Molle.

drj – dr. julius | ap, CENTURY. idee bauhaus, a drj project contributing to 100 jahre bauhaus. Berlin, April through June 2019.

El Elefante Rosado en la Habitación Aprende a Responder Agudamente ante Situaciones Hostiles / The Pink Elephant in the Room Learns to Respond Sharply to Hostile Situations, part of the series  The Pink Elephant In The Room. For El Mañana No Existe, curated by Lorena Gonzalez for the Galería Beatriz Gil in Caracas, Venezuela, through March, 2019.

Solo show: Everyday Grappling Operations, Orange County Museum of Art, November 3, 2018, through March 17, 2019.

Rema Hort Mann Foundation 2019 Emerging Artist Grant nominee

CIFO 2020 Grants and Commissions Program nominee

Bio

Mariángeles Soto-Díaz [US/VE] began her art and judo studies in her native Venezuela, the once-promising oil-and-abstraction-producing nation that has become one of the most unstable and violent countries in the world. In her recent work, Soto-Diaz has merged her judo and creative practices to explore the dynamics of power and vulnerability. Moving across traditional art categories, she creates multilayered projects that are at once political and personal, with a nomadic conceptual practice based on relational self-determination.

Soto-Diaz’s work has been exhibited at the Orange County Museum of Art, the SUR:Biennial, the Everywoman’s Biennial (London/NY), 18th Street Art Center, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, MASS MoCA, El Museo del Barrio in NYC, the Stanley Museum, the Fullerton Museum of Art, and the Wignall Museum, among other venues. She began her art studies at the Federico Brandt School of Art in Caracas, and holds a BA in Psychology and Art from Hampshire College, an MA from the California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. When not in lockdown, she trains at Bunasawa’s Dojo in Costa Mesa and at the Kodokan Judo Institute in Tokyo.

Soto-Díaz was an Assistant Professor at Hampshire College for five years before relocating to California. She was awarded an Oberman Grant Wood fellowship at the University of Iowa, and has also taught at Occidental College and the University of California, Irvine, where she is currently a Research Associate in the Latin American Studies Center. In the non-profit sector, Soto-Díaz has taught community arts programs for organizations such as Arco Iris, Nuestras Raíces and Casa Latina in western Massachusetts, and the Institute for Arts Education in San Diego. She has designed and secured funding for art programs for under-served youth, and also worked as the interim Director for the Public Service and Social Change program at Hampshire College, supervising students working in the community. Soto-Díaz lives and works in Southern California, where she is the founder of the Unconfirmed Makeshift Museum (UMM), a shifting platform for contemporary art through exhibitions and events in a neighborhood setting.