Wanda Raimundi

Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz (born 1973), is an American interdisciplinary artist of Puerto Rican descent born in The Bronx, NY and based in Orlando, FL.

Early life and education Raimundi-Ortiz was born to Puerto Rican immigrant parents near the Bronx River Projects. Growing up she was known as a bookworm, "artsy," "the new wave chick," "wanna-be white," and "from the 'hood" until graduating from the arts-target high school that she attended. That intersectionality grew to be reflected in the concepts she works with in her artwork. She graduated from Fashion Institute of Technology in 1995 with an associate degree in illustration. In 2002 she was an artist in residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 2005 she participated in Bronx AIM, a program that exposes and educates emerging artists. She earned her MFA in 2008 from Mason Gross School of Art at Rutgers University.

Career Raimundi-Ortiz's early work often examined pop, hip-hop and comic culture, depicting famous people (like Celia Cruz) or her own epic characters (like Wepa Woman and Chuleta) in mural form. But her most notable work is multi-disciplinary or performance-based such as RicanStruction that was featured in Performa '05 Biennial creating a pop-up stereotypically Nuyorican beauty parlor. Another of her more interactive performance works was featured in "The Post Millennial Black Madonna," an exhibition at Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in 2007. In 2011 Raimundi-Ortiz performed her Hush series in New York City and at Gyeongnam Art Museum in South Korea. In response to the Pulse shooting, she held a calavera making workshop in Orlando that culminated in a Dia de los Muertos ofrenda. This shrine was exhibited in the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago in 2016. Raimundi-Ortiz had work in Silos, an exhibition at American University in 2016. She was a 2016-17 recipient of a Franklin Furnace Fund. Raimundi-Ortiz is a professor at University of Central Florida.

Reinas In Raimundi-Ortiz's Reinas series, she explores the archetypical queen character by developing her own version, adorned in invented regalia inspired by personal fears and challenges including "Garbage Queen." This series consisting mostly of performance ephemera and photographic portraits was exhibited in New Jersey at The Gateway Project as part of (em) POWER DYNAMICS: Exploring the Modes of Female Empowerment and Representation in America. For this first iteration she collaborated with the University of Central Florida gospel choir, designer Kristina Tollefson and local dj, DJ Stereo 77 to enrich the experience.