Born and raised in Auckland, Dita Angeles completed her BFA at Whitecliffe College in 2004 before spending the majority of her career in Asia and more recently Australia.

With a strong background in portraiture - social presentation, perception and persuasion are the dominant themes that run through Dita's work.  Her paintings are inspired by existential philosophies and 20th century aesthetics, and depict social issues and personal moments that incorporate the spectacle of contemporary culture, paying close attention to behaviour, ego, identity and anonymity.

We have a fascinating honest chat about the difficulties of moving to other countries and trying to maintain an art practice, creating new contacts and artistic communities and then also the challenges of returning to NZ and again building her community and promoting her work. Dita talks about a traumatic medical event she experienced in Hong Kong which left her disabled and how this has affected her life.

She speaks of her photographic practice, how important composition is for her, how she has to see something to paint it and likes to use her own photography or found images for her work with an emphasis on anonymity and how she sometimes uses herself as a subject but in that case sees herself as a character playing a role. 

We talk about her striking upcoming show #Iconograph, which is showing at The Grey Place in Auckland from September 3rd - September 14th 2024. We discuss the symbols in these works such as leather and sunglasses and the icon references she incorporates.

Dita talks in depth about other portraiture series of works - The Post Mod Wallflowers which she showed at the Auckland Art Show in 20, The Gentleman's Club referencing the Me Too movement and her ongoing series Compositions of Identity which are thought provoking cropped images of people at a party in the mid 20th century. We discuss her amazing painting "It's love" of NZ musician Chris Knox which is a finalist in the Adam Portraiture award 2024, and how this came about.

And she shares how people often don't connect her as the artist of her work and how anti-climatic it feels for her when she finishes a painting. And so much more!

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