Salma Garcia Nolasco was born in San Salvador, El Salvador; her family immigrated to southeastern Pennsylvania in 2000. Garcia grew up north of Philadelphia. As a child, she began mask making and painting after being introduced to sci-fi and fantasy films. She received a BFA in Fibers and Materials Studies in 2020 from Tyler School of Art and Architecture.
StatementSalma Garcia Nolasco lives in a world where there is no such thing as authenticity. Everything exists as mimicry, and that “fake” can be just as legitimate as “real”. This is a world where objects shape-shift and people transform—as if they are characters moving between masks in a play. This is a world where all interactions are treated as performances, all dialogues follow a script, all people are actors, and all objects are props. Every room behaves as a stage, where its objects wait patiently for the performers to walk in and act. Through this hyperbolic world-making, Garcia embraces the performance of life. These artificial environments and characters act as stand-ins for real life situations, allowing Garcia to further investigate personal interactions. Often using painting and mask making, Garcia uses portraits and surrealism to represent these ideas of human experience.She creates extensions of the body with self portraiture and sculptures, like masks
StatePA
