BIOGRAPHY

SUSANA ALDANONDO

Artist | New York

Susana Aldanondo (b. 1976, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is an Argentine-American contemporary artist living and working in New York City.

She holds an MFA from the New York Academy of Art (Tribeca, New York) and is pursuing an MA in Public Art, Culture and Policy, from Universidad Nacional de las Artes.

Her multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, and public interventions, exploring the intersections of abstraction, figuration, music, cultural memory, identity, and female empowerment.

Aldanondo’s abstract paintings investigate the relationship between sound and visual expression. Drawing inspiration from musical composition, rhythm, geometry, and improvisation, she develops dynamic visual structures in which line, color, and movement translate musical experiences into visual form. Her artistic language is also informed by the ornamental traditions of Buenos Aires, particularly fileteado, which she reinterprets through gestural abstraction and contemporary painting.

Alongside her abstract practice, Aldanondo develops a figurative body of work informed by ancient art, mythology, symbolism, and the imaginary. Her compositions frequently explore female figures, cultural archetypes, the immigrant experience, empowerment, and the unseen. Working with simplified forms and a distinctive color palette, she creates visual narratives that move between historical references and contemporary experience.

Music remains an important dimension of her practice. Through collaborations with musicians and composers associated with the Juilliard School, Columbia University, the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, and New York’s tango and jazz orchestras, Aldanondo has explored the relationship between improvisation, performance, and visual creation. These collaborations have resulted in interdisciplinary presentations in which painting and music develop in dialogue, often in real time.

Her engagement with public space represents another very significant dimension of her work. Through ongoing artistic interventions in SoHo, New York, Aldanondo challenges conventional distinctions between public and private space, institutional and independent art, and the boundaries of contemporary artistic practice. She exposes the power dynamics that exist in the art world. Her projects address visibility, cultural participation, as well as the position of women artists within the art world.

Aldanondo holds an MFA from the New York Academy of Art and studied painting at The Art Students League of New York, where she studied with Larry Poons, Ronnie Landfield, James Little, and took seminars from Knox Martin and Frank Stella. While studying there, she received several distinctions, including the Leonard Rosenfeld Award in Abstract Painting selected by curators of MoMA and PS1MoMA . Her artistic development has also included research and an artist residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art culminating in taking part of the prestigious Copyist Program, and an Artist Residency at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Years back, she also participated of an Artist Residency in Iceland, culminating in her assistance in the organization of an Arts Festival there.

Her work has been exhibited at institutions and venues including the Steinberg Museum of Art, Susquehanna Art Museum, Queens College, KinoSaito Art Center, Taller Boricua, Flushing Bid, Waldorf Astoria, Four Seasons Hotel and Residencies, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. Her work is represented in the Virata Family Collection and has been featured in publications including Forbes Latin America, Hyperallergic, Whitehot Magazine, and Artland Magazine.

Aldanondo’s practice continues to move between abstraction, figuration, music, and public intervention, examining how personal experience, cultural heritage, and collective memory can find expression through contemporary art whilst also challenging conventions of what culture is.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS & PRESENTATIONS

Susana Aldanondo has presented her work in exhibitions, institutional programs, galleries, and interdisciplinary art events in New York and internationally.

Selected Institutions, Galleries & Art Organizations

  • Taller Boricua, New York

  • Free Parking Gallery, CartDept for AirLab

  • Waldorf Astoria New York

  • KinoSaito Art Center

  • Steinberg Museum of Art

  • Susquehanna Art Museum

  • Arsenal Gallery- Central Park, NYC Parks

  • Queens College, City University of New York

  • Halsey McKay Gallery

  • Susan Eley Fine Art

  • Rema Hort Mann Foundation

  • Four Seasons Hotel & Residencies Downtown

  • New York Foundation for the Arts

  • Flushing Bid

  • The Art Students League of New York

  • New York Society of Women Artists

Selected Public Art & Interdisciplinary Projects

  • Public Women – Public art intervention with Brittany Di Mauro and Kanami Kusajima.

  • And Everything in Between – Across the Street Project, SoHo, New York.

    Selected Performances

  • Performance USA – Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, New York.

  • Immigrant Biennial 2023 – PS122 Gallery, New York. Performance for Yali Ramagozza’s project No Me Pongas en lo Oscuro (Action 8).

  • Slow- – Interdisciplinary performance addressing social justice, human rights, and the experience of time.

Grants

  • New York Foundation for the Arts Grant

  • Rauschenberg Foundation Emergency Grant

Residencies & Research

  • Metropolitan Museum of Art – Residency and Copyist Program in association with the New York Academy of Art.

  • School of Visual Arts, New York – Residency.

  • Iceland – Artist residency.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION 

Embassy of Argentina, Manila Philippines, where the Consul and Ministry of Foreign Affairs is documenting her work as of significant cultural and heritage value to the culture of Argentina. One of her works is on display.

NYAA Scholar Scholarship Award 

Susan Wasserstein Patron of the Arts Scholar Award NYAA

Merit Scholarship Award Winner in Abstract Painting - The Art Students League of New York

The Leonard Rosenfeld Award - through the generosity of the Leonard Rosenfeld Fund through The Art Students League of New York selected by jurors of The Museum of Modern Art in NYC (MoMA)  for said scholarship.  Jurors:  Mitra Abbaspour PhD., MoMA,  James Lee  PS1MoMA for said scholarship.  

James Little Student Exhibition - Honorable Mention 

Larry Poons Student Exhibition - Red Dot winner * by professors & peers.

Opera Show Honorable mention by Yukako (Hong Kong & New York)

Hamptons Fine Art Fair Chief Curator’s Best In Booth Award 

Hamptons Fine Art Fair Chief Curator’s Picks Award 

National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) Abstract Painting Juried Award Winner

Jackson’s Painting Prize (London, UK) Long-listed

Samsung USA - Featured artist 

ArtScope Magazine - Competition Winner. Juried by The Milken Family Foundation, The Newport Contemporary Art Museum and the Colby College Museum. 

SPECIAL FEATURES 

CBS - The Equalizer, featuring three works curated by - Hollywood Art Curator & Art Advisor.

SAMSUNG USA - Finalist, featured on Samsung USA

PRESS

COLLABORATIONS

  • Airstream Inc., AirLab, CartDept.

  • Musicians of the Juilliard School of Music

  • Brooklyn Conservatory of Music

  • Pablo Aslan (AvanTango)

  • Triffon Dimitrov Jazz Quartet

  • NYC based tango orchestra: Suarez Paz Tango, Piazzolla 100, AvanTango with Pablo Aslan

  • Central Park Tango Collaboration

  • Queens Rising

  • NascentNY Advisory

  • Cuquita the Cuban Doll

  • La Maison de Beaumont, where Aldanondo selected and sponsored five fellow artists for a paid artist residency in France

  • The Brooklyn Review

  • Pause, Performance Art USA & NYC Cultural Affairs, NYC Parks, curated by Hector Canonge

  • Noah Fort Jazz Quartet

  • Astoria Park - Trifón Dimitrov Quartet Astoria Park Alliance & Queens Rising - Astoria Park Musical Walk 

  • Piazzolla 100 - Centennial Celebration held at Roosevelt Island, New York, presented by Suarez Paz Tango

  • Her Tango- Art, Performance and Tango presented by Suarez Paz Tango

  • Brooklyn Review:  Visual Art & Poetry

  • Latin-American Poets Miguel Angel Zapata and NYC Poetry City College, Hofstra University, BiCOA,  during Friends of Hugo Bastidas Exhibition where Aldanondo participated