Updated Bio and Artist Statement - Diana Saintilme

Bio:


    Born and raised in Irvington, New Jersey, where she currently resides, Diana Saintilme is a first generation American to Haitian immigrant parents. She is a current BFA Graphic Design major at New Jersey City University. She discovered her love for design during her sophomore year of high school while taking a Digital Publishing class. After taking the class, she fell in love with graphic design and decided to make being a graphic designer her future career goal. As a graphic designer, she mainly does her work on Adobe applications, mainly Adobe Illustrator.

    Through her work, she likes to dive into topics relating to the struggles of finding your own identity in a society that wants you to act like something else. While this struggle may not be clear, it is something that many people go through internally. Her works explore the psychological effect that this struggle may have on someone. To show what someone would go through internally that they may not want others to see. Her goal is to not only to express her own identity through design but also allow others to be seen and understood.


Artist Statement:


    As a graphic designer, I mainly work digitally to get my thoughts and ideas across. My work mainly revolves around psychological aspects of trying to find your own identity and trying to find balance with who you are vs. who society expects you to be. When originally starting my design career, I found myself creating a variety of work such as promotional posters and logos for fun. However, as I continued designing and got more serious about my career, I found myself focusing on themes surrounding the struggles to find harmony and balance. I struggled with trying to find the balance between being feminine and masculine. The way I present myself comes off as being masculine and with the way I grew up, I was taught to learn to be a woman and how to be feminine.

    I often struggled to find the balance with being who I am while trying to act the way I was told. I came across the idea of utopia, the perfect society, a place that is impossible to get to. I related this idea to my own experience with struggling to find balance and harmony within my own life. I realize that finding harmony and balance is something that is widely strived for but can’t always be achieved. Through my work, I want to create visuals that reflect the ongoing struggle to find balance, both within and around us. My goal is to create a space where others can feel like they are understood in their own struggles through the language of art and design.