Erik Sanchez

Tribe: Shoalwater Bay / Chinook
Based In: Shoalwater Bay, WA
Email: eriksanchez5@gmail.com
Social Media: @erik___sanchez
Website: www.sanchez-creative.com

About the Art
Erik Sanchez creates narrative Native photography and film while documenting contemporary society and landscapes. He is visually inspired by the snapshot aesthetic, German expressionism, film noir, stoner comedy & rock and roll culture. Sanchez utilizes surrealism as a device to portray Native stories and their connection to the spirit world and as a way to communicate empathy with his viewers. His visuals are music driven and his themes include mysticism, social justice, poverty and climate change. While his work focuses on the sacredness of the spirit world and his understandings about Indigenous cosmology, they are also motivated by heavy emotions of drama and comedy, draped over narratives as conceptual ideas and visual storylines. His hypnotic landscapes combined with melodramatic characters pave the way for unique surreal portraiture.

About the Artist
Born in Yuma, Arizona in 1989, Sanchez was raised in the Imperial Valley where he graduated high school in Brawley, California in 2007. Continuing his education in film at Scottsdale Community College until taking an internship in Marseille, France in 2013 working alongside a design firm. Sanchez graduated from Everett Community College where he got a degree in Fine Art Photography in the Summer of 2018 and is furthering on with a B.A. in Cinematic and Performance Art at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Sanchez has been displayed at Russell Day Gallery and The Schack in Everett, Wa, The Imperial Valley Kayak Club and The Carmen Durazo Cultural Arts Center in Southern California and Old Dirty Design in Marseille, France.