Frogman’s Staff Exhibition: Special Edition!
Bio
Mariana Astete is a Chilean-born artist and printmaker currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking at the University of South Dakota. Working primarily in intaglio and lithography, her practice explores themes of immigration, labor, and American identity through narrative driven imagery. Astete often employs shifts in scale, text, and familiar Americana symbols to create scenes where small figures navigate oversized objects, signage, and systems, reflecting moments of displacement, resilience, and quiet irony.
Astete’s work is informed by the historical role of printmaking as a democratic and activist medium. Drawing from the visual language of political posters, commercial signage, and everyday materials, she merges image and text to examine how power, visibility, and belonging are constructed. Her recent work expands beyond traditional print formats through collage, laser engraving, and sculptural interventions, allowing her to investigate printmaking as both an object and an environment.
In addition to her studio practice, Astete is an experienced educator who has served as instructor of record and teaching assistant for drawing and printmaking courses. She approaches teaching as a collaborative process, emphasizing technical clarity, critical dialogue, and community within shared studio spaces. Through both her teaching and artistic practice, Astete remains committed to printmaking as a space for experimentation, storytelling, and social engagement.
Artist Statement
My work reflects reconstruction, interruption, moments of crossing, processing, and living in transit. Through drawing, printmaking, and laser cutting, I reconstruct fragments of my Chilean heritage and my journey to the United States. My identity is not fixed; it is continuously taken apart and put back together, negotiated between my South American origins and my life in the United States. I address the contradictions placed on immigrants, labeled violent, yet relied upon for essential labor; visible in work, yet invisible in power.
The spaces I depict are ordinary spaces such as sinks, bulletin boards, job sites, shaped by institutional and labor structors that regulate movement and belonging. Yet I use them not only to critique those systems, but for their familiarity. The figures, often partially removed, reflect dehumanization but also persistence, their stories exceeding the frame and resisting reduction to labels. Positioned within oversized environments, they mirror how immigrants navigate vast, unfamiliar systems. Rooted in the activist history of printmaking and inspired by José Guadalupe Posada, my work amplifies marginalized voices.
I aim to foster empathy, restore visibility, and question how visible and invisible borders shape our understanding of one another.
Squeaky Clean
Mezzotint, intaglio, laser engraving
18’’x18’’
2026
Clock In
Laser engraving, screenprint
18’’x18’’
2026
Paper Wings
Intaglio, screenprint, laser engraving
18’’x18’’
2025
Casi Volé (I Almost Flew)
Intaglio, Chine-Collé
18’’x18’’
2025
Tierra de Leche y Petroleo (Land of Honey and Petroleum)
Lithography, screenprint, laser engraving
15’’x22″
2026