claudia hermano

claudia hermano is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice investigates embodiment, identity, and presence through portraiture. hermano uses photography to navigate the complexities of being — exploring how we come to know ourselves and others through the materiality and politics of the body. Grounded in body politics, queer theory, and race studies, their work considers how identities are shaped, held, and transformed within and through the body.

In their recent body of work, TIL WE ARE FULL, hermano constructs photo-objects using self-portraits printed on fabric. These textile forms echoing hermano’s own torso, hands, and other body parts while varying in size, weight, and scale. The objects emphasize a strangeness between flesh and fabric, serving as extensions and reflections of the self. hermano then rephotographs themselves interacting with these forms, blurring the boundaries between flesh and textile, biological and representational body — creating layered images in which multiple versions of the self coexist. By positioning their flesh and fabric selves together, they affirm that all bodies are made — sewn, spoken, assembled. They resist the demand to prove a single, fixed, or “real” body, offering instead a trans* understanding of embodiment as layered, constructed, and continually in process

Born in New York and raised across the United States, hermano holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. They are currently based in Albuquerque, NM, on the unceded land of the Tiwa people.

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