BIO

Amaya Lounibos Hartard is a Chilean-American artist from the Bay Area, California. She currently lives and goes to to school in Long Beach, working towards a BFA in printmaking at CSU Long Beach. In addition to this, she is a member of the California Printmaker’s Association and the Los Angeles Society of Printmakers. Using printmaking and painting techniques, her work captures her experience as a queer, biracial woman. Amaya explores themes of home, identity, family, cycles of life, and activism, through her repetitive use of double self portraiture. Her of work is embedded with the appearance of repeated motifs; conch shells, houses, long braids, swallows, fish, and ribbons. The motifs work together to weave a narrative; beginning to create a universe that her artwork exists inside of. In her work, Amaya aims to make space for people who are under-represented in fine art spaces and make art accessible to the public. In April 2024, Amaya hosted her first solo show, “Chilenita y Gringa” at Slough City Gallery. Following that, in June 2024, Amaya curated her first group show, "Liberation!", celebrating queer people and voices. In 2025, Amaya was awarded "Best in Printmaking" at TAG Gallery in Los Angeles.Outside of art, Amaya has secret talents in whistling and playing the trombone.

STATEMENT

As a Chilean-American, growing up, I didn’t know what being biracial really meant. As a kid you just assume “oh, I’m half of this! And half of that!”, and as simple as that sounds, it really means so much more. It’s always jumping between two cultures, countries, languages and identities. It’s embracing two places and realizing that you’ll never fully be accepted by either of them. It’s the lifelong search of finding where you belong; finding home. Through printmaking and painting techniques, my work explores my identity as a queer biracial woman, and navigates themes of home, womanhood, family and the cyclical nature of life and energy. What is Home? Where is Home? Who is Home? And, how does Home change over time?  With little representation of similar lived experiences to reference, I look for the answers in my own work, and often, end up looking for myself. 

In my exploration through my own identity, my work is saturated with the use of double self portraiture. Because of the fluidity and evolving nature of the self, I am interested in literally transforming my figures into different places, objects, and even veiling them; stripping myself of any likeness, gender and features at times. The cloaked figures visually tell exactly how it feels to be stuck between two identities. In addition, my body of work is embedded with the appearance of repeated motifs; a conch shell, houses, long braids, veils,  swallows, deer, fish, and ribbons. Placed into the landscapes of the places I call home; the Andes, grassy hills, mountains, my grandma’s house, and the Pacific Ocean, these motifs work together to weave not only a deeply autobiographical narrative about myself, but the larger ancestral history of human migration.