Join Analia Saban and Curime Batliner for a behind the scenes look at Shield-19, a community-oriented project that produces and distributes face shields to frontline health professionals free of charge. Designed and manufactured in Los Angeles, the shield adds a protective layer to anyone at risk, increasing safety in protecting the most vulnerable from COVID-19. With an early focus on local nursing homes and hospitals in the Los Angeles area, Shield-19 has since reached thousands of people across the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Liechtenstein.

The self-funded project is a collaboration between Analia Saban and Curime Batliner and has grown with the help of countless friends, volunteers and supporters. Shield-19 is one of many artist-run initiatives in response to the PPE shortage caused by COVID-19. Yet unlike others, it embraced from the start techniques of mass-production. The resulting product can be rapidly produced in large quantities, is flat-packed to ship, assembled by the user and very comfortable to wear. It can be cleaned and reused and is made from recyclable materials.

Analia Saban dissects and reconfigures traditional notions of painting, often using the medium of paint as the subject itself. Blurring the lines between painting and sculpture, imagery and objecthood, her work frequently includes plays on art historical references and traditions. Paintings expand to sculptural forms and sculptures are presented in two dimensions, using the process of trial and error with new techniques and technology. Her unconventional methods such as unweaving paintings, laser-burning wood and canvas, molding forms in acrylic paint, weaving paint through linen thread, remain central to her practice as she continues to explore art-making processes and materials in relation to her daily experience. Dealing with issues of fragility, balance, technique and experimentation, Saban's connection with everyday objects is at the forefront of her investigation of tangible materials and the metaphysical properties of artworks.

Born in 1980 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Saban currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She received a BFA in Visual Arts from Loyola University in New Orleans in 2001, followed by an MFA in New Genres at the University of California in Los Angeles in 2005.  Saban’s works are represented in the collections of the Hammer Museum at UCLA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Getty Research Institute, in Los Angeles; Blaffer Art Museum and The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio; Mead Art Museum in Amherst; Albright-Knox Art Gallery and Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in New York; Norton Museum of Art in Florida; The Israel Museum in Jerusalem; National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne; Centre Pompidou in Paris; among many others.
https://analiasabanstudio.com/

Curime Batliner is a Creative working with automation and simulation technologies. He is faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, SCI-Arc where he teaches classes in the graduate and postgraduate programs and is responsible for the coordination of the robotics lab. Driven by curiosity, he bounces between teaching, applied research, commercial collaborations and his artistic practice.

Born in 1983 in San Jose, Costa Rica, Curime currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the Technical University Vienna in 2008, followed by a Masters in Architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 2011. His work has been exhibited at Design Miami, Mextropoli, Museo Nacional de Arte Mexico and he has worked with brands such as Creative Artists Agency, Oblong Industries and TBWA. He has collaborated on Greg Lynn’s RV Prototype as well on the world’s first Active Energy Building by Falkeis2Architects. His design research is published at the ICRA IEEE International Conference for Robotics and Automation as well as Robots in Architecture.
https:/.www.curime.us

Crew Credits:

Production:
Creator and Executive Producer - Hernán Díaz Alonso
Producers - Marcelyn Gow/Reza Monahan

Post-Production:
Story Producer - Caroline Post
Editors - Ben Neufeld/Reza Monahan
VFX Coordinator - Sean Morris
Sound Mixing Engineer - Christina Nguyen

Additional Images Courtesy of Analia Saban and Curime Batliner

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