Santina Amato, born in Melbourne to Italian immigrants and based in the U.S. since 2010, creates multidisciplinary work that spans sculpture, video, photography, installation, and performance. Her practice examines the female experience and personal identity through materials like bread dough, used bedsheets, and discarded furniture, reimagining the domestic landscape from the perspective of a single, immigrant woman. Rooted in her upbringing in a traditional Italian household, Amato uses these materials to symbolize emotional labor, resilience, and transformation.
Amato holds an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was a 2022 AIM Fellow at the Bronx Museum. Her recent exhibitions include AIR Gallery’s 16th Biennale I Woke Up Dreaming, curated by Patricia Margarita Hernández, and The Sixth AIM Biennale at the Bronx Museum. She was the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA, and a finalist for the Monira Foundation residency. Her work has received support from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Queens Arts Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Australia Council for the Arts.
Exhibitions include the Bronx Museum, Spring/Break, Westbeth Gallery, Here Arts Center, and Governors Island in NYC; MoCA Tucson; the Arts Club of Chicago; and Samek Art Museum. Her work appears in collections at the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, the Art Institute of Chicago, Samek Art Museum and the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia.