Santina Amato is an interdisciplinary artist whose work addresses the notion of the intimate body, especially the female body. As a material focus, her interest in using bread dough within an interdisciplinary artistic dialogue, is its life cycle. Once activated by warm water and sugar, yeast cells split and divide in a process reminiscent of when an egg is fertilized by sperm. There is a peak moment when dough is voluptuous, full, and ripe just before it begins to ‘die’.

Amato was born in Australia to Italian immigrants, and has lived and worked in the USA since 2010. She received an MFA (Photography) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2017) and a BFA (Painting) from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne Australia (2009). Her first solo exhibition in the USA titled Monster, was supported by the Illinois Arts Council Agency (IACA), Individual Artist Support Project Grant and exhibited at Heaven Gallery in Chicago, IL in 2018.

Exhibitions and screenings include Governors Island Art Fair, NY, Leroy Neiman Center, Chicago, IL, ExFest Film & Video Festival, Chicago, IL, Detroit International Videonale, Kuntshalle Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art, MI, CURRENTS, Santa Fe International New Media Art Festival, NM, Brooklyn Public TV, NY, and The International Women’s Day Video Screening in Melbourne, Australia. 

Amato has held positions as Fellow and Artist-in-Residence at Process Park, Artslant & Chashama, Pine Plains, NY, Filed/Work Program: Chicago Artist Coalition, IL, Artists’ Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions (ACRE), Steuben, WI, Artspace Visual Arts Center, Sydney, Australia, New York Art Residency and Studios Foundation, NY and BRIC Media Arts House, NY. 

In August 2018, she fulfills the position as Artist-In-Residence at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA supported by the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events (DCASE), Individual Artists Program (IAP) Grant, and a fully funded position at Crosstown Arts Center in Memphis, TN in the Fall of 2018. 

Amato is Founder and Director of Moving_Image_00:00, a biannual festival in Chicago of moving image works created by Chicago-based artists. Her work is part of a collective photographic portfolio at The Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection and The Art Institute of Chicago and video collection at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia.