Aida Lizalde received a Bachelor's degree in Studio Art with a minor in Art History from the University of California, Davis (2018), and an MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University (2023). Their work explores themes of metabolization, the inner workings of the body, and the ways in which it struggles to metabolize the vast array of data that it processes in relation to post-colonization, generational memory, identity, disease, and trauma. Through systems that drip, rot, and dissolve, Lizalde investigates the complex interplay between the physical, and the psychological, and the natural and the artificial, alongside the potential for harmony and failure in these relationships. Lizalde's sculptures and installations are created using ceramics, found objects, and biomatter like milk, pinto beans, hair, bacterial cultures, and guajillo peppers. Their sculptures are hybrids that exist in spaces of transformation like a stomach becoming a tree trunk, an intestine becoming a territorial marker, or a pot becoming an anthropomorphic machine.
Lizalde has been awarded the Dedalus 2023 Master of Fine Arts Fellowship in Painting & Sculpture, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, the Alice Cabell Horsley Parker Scholarship, Toni Eddleton Memorial Scholarship, VCU Travel and Graduate research grants, Young Space Grant, Hopkins Endowment for Studio Art Students, Crocker Kingsley Art Award, and the Herb Alpert Scholarship for Emerging Young Artists.
Their work has been exhibited at Bass & Reiner, Koik Contemporary, Dairy Arts Center, Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, Axis Gallery, The Grage Door Gallery at SNU, Southern Exposure, CCA Hubbell Street Galleries, Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Holland Project, Torrance Art Museum, Museum of Northern California among others.