Statement
As a first-generation Azorean-Portuguese American, I exist in the third space, the in-between space, of old and new world, immigrant and non-immigrant, marginalized and liberated, the same but not quite, other.
Spanning a multidisciplinary art practice, I work with archival research, artifacts, and collective memory to reframe identity and representation within a visual paradigm of fragmented histories and colonial legacies in the Azores, and that of my diaspora experience in the United States.
My recent installation, Agonias—what we can’t speak of —is a word that Azorean-Portuguese women, mostly, use among themselves to describe their anxiety, which remains untranslatable into English. In this body of work, I use my prints, shelves, and artifacts to interrogate a larger, concurrent context of anxiety about belonging and white nationalist narratives.
When I reflect on my immigrant and diaspora experience, I think about resourcefulness and resilience in that experience, of holding on to objects and art as a way to speak to this essence of presence, when there is an ongoing erasure of identity and representation.
Some of the questions I’m asking is how my art makes visible contemporary structural inequalities and power imbalances, and ultimately, how my art resists neoliberalism to imagine an alternate, equitable social reality.
Bio
Diane (Diana) Machado was born and raised in the Azorean-Portuguese immigrant working-class communities of East Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. Her family moved to New Hampshire when she was a teenager, and they graduated from the University of New Hampshire in Durham with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Drawing and Printmaking.
Machado led social and economic justice campaigns and arts programming for local and national organizations early in her career. They later studied graphic design at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. She built a robust client roster as an independent designer and creative director for various organizations in the arts, higher education, environment, philanthropy, and small business sectors. As Design Director at Harvard University, Diane received an Award of Excellence from The University & College Designers Association (UCDA) for her historical capital campaign designs. Her design projects are held in the Harvard University Archives.
Machado returned to her studio art practice in 2017, focusing on mixed media and green printing techniques. They received a Local Cultural Council (LCC) grant from the Somerville Arts Council in 2021 and a Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) grant in 2024. She has exhibited in Somerville and, most recently, at the Doran Gallery and the MassArt x SOWA gallery in 2025.
Diane is a member of Zea Mays Printmaking in Florence, Massachusetts. She is a 2025 MFA graduate in Studio Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.