Cesar Conde
Born: Manila, Philippines, 1963
Cesar Conde
A product of Filipino diaspora, Conde landed in Chicago’s west side 40 years ago. He then moved to Seattle and where he participated in Seattle’s first school busing integration program. He resettled in the Windy City 28 years ago.
Conde is contemporary painter who deals with relevant social issues. He is an artist and activist who believes that art is a powerful tool for social change. He tackles issues across color lines and communities. As an intersectional artist, Conde believes that we can create empathy and with that we can affect actions for the good of humanity. He studied at Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. He also studied with the French master, Patrick Betaudier in his atelier in southern France and with Ed Hinkley in Chicago.
Angered by the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Conde created “In The Hood – Portraits of African American Professionals Wearing a Hoodie” in collaboration with his friends and other activists who were his subjects for the series placing professionals in a hoodie altering their reality to our racist societies perspective of black bodies. The main theme is “Perception” vs. “Reality”. African American lawyers, doctors, business owners, pilots, Artists were amongst his collaborators who wore a hoodie to re-examine and co-protest with societies biased against black men and women and the disproportionate amount of killings by the police. This series won the first “Paul Collins Diversity Award” in ArtPrize 2014. On November 2014, “The Bang Bang Project” was conceptualized during the protest march on Michigan Ave. after the acquittal of Michael Brown’s killer in Ferguson, Missouri. It focuses on “Racism” and “Police Brutality”. Conde found collaborators to be subjects of this difficult works placing collaborators on the sidewalk as if they were holding on to their last breath, having their dreams deferred. The collaborators in the paintings became the activators for the viewers to re-think about our current judicial and policing system. They became the ACTIVISTS.
Conde’s current series called “AmeriKKKa – Reflection of a Divided Nation” which echoes the racist narrative of the current Trump regime recording epithets thrown at immigrants, POC’s, marginalized groups and African-Americans during his campaign to his current white house occupancy.
Conde has exhibit nationally and internationally most recently in Purdue University, The Field Museum, Chicago, Museo de Arte Moderno in Turin, Italy, He is part of the 17th annual juried exhibition at Freeport Art Museum in Freeport, IL. Conde has exhibited in France, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan, Germany and in and around the U.S.A.
