Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow

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Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow
Paloma Contreras   April, 2022
Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow
Paloma Contreras                                                                                                                                April, 2022

Mexico City, 1991
Lives and works in Mexico City

By using drawing, sculpture, performance, writing and multimedia installation, Paloma Contreras Lomas addresses subjects such as gen-
der, violence, structure and political inheritance, class segregation and post-colonialism. Employing landscape as her video’s witness and
through the creation of costumes and characters with anthropological character, Contreras achieves rural portraits through the Mex-
ican thriller and explores the exotisation of the indigenous class, colonial guilt and the constructed middle class identity. By using inves-
tigation and approaching certain groups or communities, Contreras Lomas’ work contains affective bonds and, on occasions, a hint of au-
tobiographical projection.

Paloma Contreras Lomas has a bachelor’s degree in visual arts at La Esmeralda and was part of Programa Educativo SOMA, both in
Mexico City. She obtained the CIFO Cisneros Fontanals grant (with acquisition prize) for emerging artists and the Jóvenes Creadores del
FONCA grant.

Her work has been shown at Palais de Tokio, Paris; Lille 3000 Eldorado, Lille; Museo Tamayo, Galería Lodos, MUCA Roma, Alumnos 47,
Ladrón Galería and Biquini Wax, Mexico City. In recent years it has been included in public and private collections such as CIFO, Estrelli-
ta B. Brodsky Collection, Fundación M, KADIST and Phillips/Yuyito.

She has participated in the residency Lille 3000 Eldorado in Lille.
Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow
Paloma Contreras                                  Project selection                                                                                    April, 2022

Area X
Presented during Art Basel Miami Beach 2021 with Pequod Co.

“Desolation tries to colonize you” - Jeff VanderMeer

Area X is a place created by Jeff VanderMeer in his fantasy and sci-fi novel Annihilation, part of the literary trilogy Southern Reach,
which was later adapted to cinema. The Area X is located in northern Florida and hosts a landscape otherness unknown to human
beings.

The United States of America has generated its identity from different constructions of otherness, justifying interventionism from a
constant threat to American homeland security. The warning of a possible death of the American dream has had different facets, which
have infiltrated in American cinema deeply connected to the building of the nation-state of the USA.

The 20th Century flooded the screens with scaled, underground and communist monsters. Martians that came from the USSR or Jeff
Goldblum, a 4th of July, containing a spaceship full of Latin American immigrants. They would eventually end up working illegally in his
country, mowing perfectly landscaped lawns, trampled by smooth, Golden Retriever spies.

The 21st Century was inaugurated by the TV transmission of the terrorist highjack. Finally, Bush whispered in our occidentalized ear that
evil no longer came from that Jupiterian android. Evil had a name and it hid in a remote location. In a lost cave in Afghanistan, far away
from white gaze. Evil lived in the present, it didn’t come from the future to tell us anything. In fact, it lived in the landscape of the illegal. A
landscape that hosts the guerrilla and the narc in the Middle East and in Latin America. It is there where Evil lives, according to the State
and a good-mannered establishment. Morality between good and bad has dissipated for a long time.

Area X doesn’t represent a far away or interplanetary threat. It is the monstrosity or otherness that dwells in a dystopian present within
one of the whiteness epicenters. One that is invaded by marginal communities that have turned into vast majorities.

Science Fiction that originates in Europe and the USA is flooded with the idea of the future. Either a Utopia or a dystopian prospect,
there is an opportunity to imagine. In the Evil called undeveloped world, imagining the prediction of a possible private property is harder
every day. It becomes more of a fantasy. The future never came, neither the chance to imagine it. Dystopia has stranded in the present.
Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Area X, 2021

                                       Exhibition view, Art Basel Miami Beach
                                       2021 Positions Sector, Miami Convention
                                       Center, Miami, USA
Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Area X, 2021

                                       Exhibition view, Art Basel Miami Beach
                                       2021 Positions Sector, Miami Convention
                                       Center, Miami, USA
Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Area X, 2021

                                       Exhibition view, Art Basel Miami Beach
                                       2021 Positions Sector, Miami Convention
                                       Center, Miami, USA
Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Area X, 2021

                                       Exhibition view, Art Basel Miami Beach
                                       2021 Positions Sector, Miami Convention
                                       Center, Miami, USA
Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Jeff Goldblum en el Día de la Indepen-
                                       dencia, 2021

                                       Foam and helmet
                                       Variable dimensions
Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Details of Jeff Goldblum en el Día de la
                                       Independencia, 2021
Paloma Contreras April, 2022 - Webflow
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Details of Area X, 2021
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Details of Area X, 2021
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Details of Area X, 2021
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Details of Jeff Goldblum en el Día de la
                                       Independencia, 2021
Paloma Contreras                                 Project selection                                                                         April, 2022

Cartucho (la nación espiritual)
Siembra 33

The Secret of Stones
The following exhibition happened during a blackout, a phenomenological essay, depicted in an artificial manner. The installation
is divided into rocks, caves, ashes, and pantheistic clouds of smoke that together form an artificial ecosystem. Each of the elements is
accompanied by a spectre, a ghost, or an apparition. Just like casting the search for the right questions to the wind. What I mean is,
there is no such thing as a universal spectre and what is being proposed in these phenomenological-political invocations are different
methodologies of listening to the constructed landscape, the testimonial landscape.

FIRST MANIFESTO TO THE VOLCANO

FIRST MANIFESTO TO THE SPIRITUAL NATION
That year, the stones were converted into night,
embrace me cloud, align me with the rest of the ashes,
that year, plumes of smoke revealed themselves to be the true covert
terrorists,
hiding in their cave, what is beyond its gaze, of legality,
embrace me night, hide me beneath your darkness,
that year, complete darkness became a trade,
put me to rest rest in the landscape and find me in the senate,
that year, the eruptions would be transmitted on national networks,
unstitch me mother, in your houses of fog,
that year, the devil ceased being the only one smelling of sulphur,
Paloma Contreras                                Project selection            April, 2022

the government smelled like it too,
put me to sleep volcano, for I’m so tired of being a student, best to find
me in the south,
that year, the mountain entered the central chimney, blowing itself up,
after the economical crisis,
kill me father, make me global, welcome the new Spiritual Nation,
where the climate is political, where the landscape is natural,
that year, the monuments made us orphans and became gunpowder,
find me stone, for you’ve been searching for me for centuries in the
wrong place, for I am in the snow, in the skirts of the hidden union.
That year, the strike ended and the university became a cemetery.
–Paloma Contreras Lomas
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Cartucho (la nación espiritual), 2021

                                       Exhibition view, kurimanzutto, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Cartucho (la nación espiritual), 2021

                                       Exhibition view, kurimanzutto, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Cartucho (la nación espiritual), 2021

                                       Exhibition view, kurimanzutto, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Cartucho (la nación espiritual), 2021

                                       Exhibition view, kurimanzutto, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                               April, 2022

                                       Oficio de tinieblas, 2021

                                       Set of 3: Foam, vinyl, plush fabric and
                                       plastic
                                       266 x 340 x 473 cm
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                               April, 2022

                                       Cuebaby, 2021

                                       Plush fabric, foam, velvet, textiles, plastic
                                       plants, vinyl, moldable foam, tulle, cush-
                                       ions, wool and steel
                                       217 x 230 x 380 cm

                                       Inside: Piedras muertas del miedo, 2021
                                       Video
                                       7 min. 26 sec.
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La nación espiritual, 2021

                                       Graphite on paper
                                       170 x 124 x 2 cm
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       Obscurana y calentura, 2021

                                       Graphite on paper
                                       60 x 51.5 x 2 cm
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       Sacrosindicato, 2021

                                       Graphite on paper
                                       67 x 53 x 2 cm
Paloma Contreras                                 Project selection                                                                                    April, 2022

El pantano de las ánimas / The Marshland of Souls

The show integrates Contreras’ recent interests, where a mine in Zacatecas becomes a theatrical stage. Subjects such as gender role and
political, economic and social hierarchies of the area, combined with the implications of the self-assumed status of middle class are ad-
dressed, as are the influence they have on Paloma’s perception as woman, Mexican and artist.

In the artist’s own words:

     This exhibition shows some of the landscape’s attire. Each of them escorted by a ghost or a specter.

     The observation of landscape as a political alternative.

     The secret of the hills, conversations between cacti and the hidden life of stones. Through different pop figures, by means of a televi-
     sual imaginary, of the eternally foreign tripper, I pretend to articulate certain apparitions in a country with several skies, where we
     might not be asking the correct questions to the horizon, because the answers might be on the soil’s humidity.

     With this, I do not pretend to romanticize a landscape where I was not born in, but to fictionalize the hills’ free will. In the show, dif-
     ferent characters born from fiction are disposed, inspired in a promise’s nostalgia of an agricultural country which turned into a ma-
     quila and a field of neoliberal experimentation.

     The representation of the Mexican countryside in the 20th century is still roaming as a ghost of the never fulfilled revolutionary prom-
     ise. Today, more than half of the Mexican skies are licensed, as if the stones or our ancestors-plateau did not have free will. Mexico’s
     landscape has hidden guerrillas, drug dealers and movie heroes. At the same time, The Fog has sheltered the State from coups, tuck-
     ing in the real children of the landscape, those who the Mother-State of Stone has termed as others historically.

     I am interested in imagining the abyss where characters enliven from their sculptural and literary condition. Where at some point,
     what underlies in the landscape accomplishes that the imaginary achieves to dominate and transform imagination.

     In The Marshland of Souls a saguaro appears, the same saguaro which observed Wayne’s western films, the one which is still there, watching how
     the subsoil is pinched, bought and stripped. The same which had fake saguaros produced, posing as a fern, posing as governor, to
     make us think it was them to make us think we were citizens with a point of view, when we are nothing in front of them: The Hills.
Paloma Contreras                                Project selection                                                                                 April, 2022

     …the answer is on the soil’s humidity.”
     - Paloma Contreras Lomas

The show The Marshland of Souls is composed by a multimedia installation which contains Plano americano as the core, a fiction Western
video filmed in a mine in the central-northern region of Mexico. Parallel to this, five textile sculptures are displayed, made of different ma-
terials such as latex, plush, foam and velvet. These are: a Yuca tree with plush hands and legs, mutilated limbs belonging to the TV charac-
ter El Coyote, accompanied by a saguaro armed to the teeth. A sombrero of a desertic landscape ready to be used by a ghost. A revolu-
tionary Bugs Bunny behind a mesophilic bush and a Consaupo’s bunker fitted in a lined hat.

Two pencil drawings inhabit in the same installation. The first one, a homage to a United States’ cartoon of the beginning of the century
and its imperialistic look of Mexico, where the Mexican desolated field is shown. An agrarian failed promise, where a pop-prehispanic
entity lives under dry soil, asleep on its own wealth. The second drawing, closer to the sculptural imaginary displayed in the show, por-
trays, perhaps, the same Yuca, darker, with fragrant guns, rolling out extremities and ghosts which count gold in the purest Western style:
the landscape-witness comes to life.

The show ends with a lightbox where 20 little sculptures covered in malleable foamy lie; interpretations of what’s popular, represented in
a pop-decaying imaginary.
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       El pantano de las ánimas / The Marsh-
                                       land of Souls, 2020

                                       Exhibition view, Pequod Co, Mexico City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       El pantano de las ánimas / The Marsh-
                                       land of Souls, 2020

                                       Exhibition view, Pequod Co, Mexico City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       El pantano de las ánimas / The Marsh-
                                       land of Souls, 2020

                                       Exhibition view, Pequod Co, Mexico City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       El pantano de las ánimas / The Marsh-
                                       land of Souls, 2020

                                       Exhibition view, Pequod Co, Mexico City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       Otrxs mundxs, 2020-2021

                                       Exhibition view, Museo Tamayo, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       Otrxs mundxs, 2020-2021

                                       Exhibition view, Museo Tamayo, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras                                  Project selection                                                                                     April, 2022

Dr. Psiquiatra o El Más Allá Mexicano / Dr. Psychiatrist or The Mexican Beyond

This show is a tribute to all the friends I’ve lost and to the landscape that has been watching over me through the years. The works come
from a literary text that I usually hide, but that is actually the genesis of this Mexican thriller. Fiction can be useful to help us talk about dif-
ficult or embarrassing things. In this particular project I use it to talk about the suspense in the middle class, in a country where this group
is extremely conservative, accommodated, and allergic to looking at itself in the mirror. I, proudly, belong to that lineage, so little spo-
ken about and so well hidden in art. I was taught, both by The State and in school, that if I wanted to politicize myself I had to acquire the
magical powers of declassing- the disappearance of class distinctions. The State (or the vestiges that remain of Him) has been very effi-
cient through history in reaffirming the colonial hierarchies that categorize and oppress. Mexico has decided to commercialize and over-ex-
ploit the indigenous identity, while making it invisible. We construct and benefit through its representation and exoticization, turning it into a
commodity, but we are not interested in the well being of the subjects we are guilty of oppressing. The same happens in art, we profit from
the representation of the abysmal other, unknown and romanticized, specifically in research projects of anthropological character. Terror
is embodied in a class that can neither be seen nor articulated, but that exudes a colonial anxiety and guilt that is kept hidden.

This is a tale. A fiction used to speak about declassing and about race and skin color, in a country that considers these subjects to be un-
tactful and tasteless. My chronicle is represented in props, costumes and garments of the political landscape, each one working as witness
and character, deciding what to show to its sons and what to hide from its bastards.

These works talk about the ghosts that I was about to find, that did nothing to warn me about the stupidity of the middle class, daring to go
into territories unknown. I was not aware that I was about to go into the Mexican other side. Nobody told me to go back to the comfort of
the city, into the fog that is not any less dangerous, but at least is better known. Juan del Monte whispered several times into my ears. He
told me I did not belong. The female body is in danger in that landscape, but it is also privileged in the face of that community, separated
by a colonial abyss.

This is about appearances in the hills. This is a story, a projection, an autobiography of the terror I encountered when I wore the fog sky
mask. I will not tell you where I’ve been, I’ll just tell a story, a fiction based in reality, a true Mexican suspense. This is the only way I have
to speak about some things that frighten and embarrass me.
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       El Monte / The Mount, 2019

                                       Digital Photo
                                       2019
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                               April, 2022

                                       Sombrero de Hidroeléctrica / Hydro-
                                       electric hat, 2020

                                       Plush hat, velvet, stuffed fabric, different
                                       textiles
                                       100 x 110 cm
Paloma Contreras   Project selection   April, 2022
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       El Monte / The Mount, 2019

                                       Digital photo
                                       Variable measures
Paloma Contreras   Project selection   April, 2022
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       La Cueva / The Cave, 2020

                                       Plush, foam, satin and wire
                                       25 x 120 x 120 cm
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       El Más Allá Mexicano / The Mexican
                                       Beyond, 2020

                                       Digital photography
                                       Variable measures
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Dr. Psiquiatra o El Más Allá Mexicano /
                                       Dr. Psychiatrist or The Mexican Beyond,
                                       2020

                                       Exhibition view, Salón Silición, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Pistola Nerf de peluche / Nerf stuffed
                                       gun, 2019
                                       60 x 35 cm

                                       Pistola de peluche / Stuffed gun, 2019
                                       Variable measures
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                              April, 2022

                                       El monte / The Mount, 2019

                                       Hat lined with velvet, wool, plush and plas-
                                       tic
                                       25 x 120 x 120 cm
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Dr. Psiquiatra o El Más Allá Mexicano /
                                       Dr. Psychiatrist or The Mexican Beyond,
                                       2020

                                       Exhibition view, Salón Silición, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Dr. Psiquiatra o El Más Allá Mexicano /
                                       Dr. Psychiatrist or The Mexican Beyond,
                                       2020

                                       Exhibition view, Salón Silición, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Bugs Bunny detrás de un arbusto mesófilo
                                       /Bugs Bunny behind a mesophilic bush,
                                       2020

                                       Charcoal on paper
                                       100 x 70 cm
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       La Espera Femenina/ The female wait,
                                       2019

                                       Mixed media
                                       50 x 50 cm
Paloma Contreras                               Project selection                                                                             April, 2022

Los dramas del sur / The South Dramas

The South Dramas consist of a series of episodes that emulate a non-typical TV format that are transmitted via YouTube and Instagram
TV. The project is closer to a video -art media that uses humor and irreverent images and languages in order to talk and communicate,
paradoxically, in a subtle way.

The South Dramas intends to be a platform where certain topics, like gender and violence, can be treated without solemnity, without any
intention of underestimating the importance of these, but using different media like video-art, humor, and b-series aesthetic, in order to
deepen them within a different gaze and treatment.

*Ongoing project at Biquini Wax EPS

https://vimeo.com/380605395
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       The South Dramas. First chapter, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       The South Dramas. First chapter, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       The South Dramas. First chapter, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       The South Dramas. First chapter, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       Episodio cazafantasmas. Second chap-
                                       ter, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       Episodio cazafantasmas. Second chap-
                                       ter, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Huele de noche. Third chapter, 2020

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Huele de noche. Third chapter, 2020

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras                              Project selection                                                                             April, 2022

Plano americano / American shot

American shot is a project that emerges from an ongoing investigation that began in 2017 in the Sierra Hermosa region, Zacatecas, as
part of an invitation from the Sierra Hermosa Community Museum.

From the construction of emotional ties and the approach to the nearest marble mine, currently, Contreras builds a fiction based on West-
ern films, in comparison with Mexican rural representations, which have not changed since the Mexican Revolution. Sierra Hermosa is a
community with approximately 200 inhabitants mostly women, children and older adults, heirs of the revolutionary stripe shop and the
hacienda system, currently plagued by state abandonment, Sierra Hermosa is a community about to disappear.
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       Plano americano / American shot, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       Plano americano / American shot, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       Plano americano / American shot, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                          April, 2022

                                       Plano americano / American shot, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras                               Project selection                                                                                April, 2022

Sa La Na, a Yuum, Iasis / Laissez Faire-Laissez Passer

Sa La Na, a Yuum, Iasis / Laissez Faire-Laissez Passer is a multimedia installation conceived as an allegorical parody of Mexico’s economic
liberalization between 1986 and 1996.

Here, Keiko’s anatomy - the first orca superstar - operates as a container of a poetic and material staging that turns its housing into a mu-
seum populated with urban cultural matter.

This digestive ecosystem, formed by the remains of the sea beast, is a powerful metaphor for how neoliberal policies intertwine with a
Latin American context proper to late capitalism.

Piece created collectively by Biquini Wax EPS, presented at the Prince.ess.ess des Villes exhibition, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2019.
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Biquini Wax EPS.
                                       Sa La Na, A Yuum, Iasos /
                                       Laissez Faire – Laissez Passer, 2019

                                       Mixed media
                                       Variable measures
                                       Whale approx.: 700 x 400 x 300 cm
                                       Video 1: 8:48 min
                                       Video 2: 10:48 min
                                       Flags / harpoons; 200 cm each (6 in to-
                                       tal)
                                       Two channel excerpt of 3:27 min
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Biquini Wax EPS.
                                       Sa La Na, A Yuum, Iasos /
                                       Laissez Faire – Laissez Passer, 2019

                                       Detail
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Biquini Wax EPS.
                                       Sa La Na, A Yuum, Iasos /
                                       Laissez Faire – Laissez Passer, 2019

                                       Detail
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       Biquini Wax EPS.
                                       Sa La Na, A Yuum, Iasos /
                                       Laissez Faire – Laissez Passer, 2019

                                       Detail
Paloma Contreras                               Project selection                                                                               April, 2022

La maldita sed del oro / The damn thirst of gold

The damn thirst for gold was a project developed within an invitation to a residence in Lille, France called Eldorado where the theme was
Mexico.

The city, due to the theme of the festival was flooded by Frida Kahlo and gigantic alebrijes, motifs represented in a grotesque way. Alche-
my came as a response to anxiety towards the third world, European alchemy, as a method to counteract the self-expression of an imag-
inary place that did not even exist in Mexico, but in Peru. The philosopher’s stone as an object of desire of the mafia and terrifying mi-
grant who lives in Europe more and more domesticated, increasingly closer. I was interested in taking advantage of the immediate format
of production, I took the residence as a place of experimentation within serie b Horror , I worked in the creation of fiction and characters
that I have been developing in my practice, resultingin a video installation where a philosopher’s stone hidden in an icy palette is sought
and desired by different medieval characters that appear in the present more similar to a rapper or a gangster in Adidas sports suits.

*Project developed as Biquini Wax EPS
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La maldita sed del oro / The damn thirst
                                       of gold, 2019

                                       Video still
                                       4:15 min

                                       https://vimeo.com/345797943
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La maldita sed del oro / The damn thirst
                                       of gold, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La maldita sed del oro / The damn thirst
                                       of gold, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La maldita sed del oro / The damn thirst
                                       of gold, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La maldita sed del oro / The damn thirst
                                       of gold, 2019

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras                                Project selection                                                                                 April, 2022

La vida secreta de los perros / The secret life of dogs

The secret life of dogs has as a starting point the mutual dreams -dream telepathy- in the rural community of San Andrés Tzicuilan, Cuet-
zalan, Puebla. In this territory, the cornerstone of capitalism, private property does not operate in the same way as in the rest of the cities
of the country because a communal relationship with the land is maintained. Contreras’ hypothesis is that something similar happens with
dreams, that is, dreams as well as land are not private, but communal. Based on a critical link between desire and politics, she proposes
to analyze the phantom spectrum of mutual dreams as a space for the collective unconscious. The mutual dream as an imaginary place
where the community sublimates structural problems inherent in capitalism: dispossession, drug trafficking, racism, machismo, poverty,
etc. Therefore, Contreras identified the bull as a recurring and insistent phantasmagoric motive in the dreams of the community, which led
her to consider its image as a point of libidinal escape, a phallic image where discomforts of the people converge.

Currently, Paloma Contreras is producing a science fiction short film related to her research and experience in San Andrés Tzicuilan,
where the genre of horror and science fiction will be key to presenting the problem of anthropological work itself in contemporary art.
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
                                       cret life of dogs, 2018

                                       Video still
                                       6:50 min

                                       https://vimeo.com/279603826
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
                                       cret life of dogs, 2018

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
                                       cret life of dogs, 2018

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
                                       cret life of dogs, 2018

                                       Video still
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
                                       cret life of dogs, 2018

                                       Installation view MUCA Roma, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                            April, 2022

                                       La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
                                       cret life of dogs, 2018

                                       Installation view MUCA Roma, Mexico
                                       City
Paloma Contreras                             Project selection                                                                           April, 2022

Poema maquilista / Industrial poem

Performance presented at the Siqueiros Public Art Hall in collaboration with Wendy Cabrera Rubio.

Participation of Patricia Rubio in textile and automotive maquila and Edna (Andromeda) in music. The performance consisted of the
packaging of a McLaren Formula 1 car in front of the Siqueirian muralism, showing the hand that works in the dark from the performance
and poetic action; the hand of the Latin American women’s maquila.

The performance culminated with a written poem: INDUSTRIAL POETRY, CHAPTER I
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Poema maquilista / Industrial poem,
                                       2018

                                       Poem and performance
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Poema maquilista / Industrial poem,
                                       2018

                                       Poem and performance
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Poema maquilista / Industrial poem,
                                       2018

                                       Poem and performance
Paloma Contreras                               Project selection                                                                                April, 2022

La fiebre de oro / The gold fever

The gold fever is a multimedia project that unfolds the notion of Mexican trade union suspense. The title refers to the state of intoxication
of the former workers of the extinct Mint of Mexico and at the time they secretly minted gold coins for the outgoing president. The project
has been developed in a five-year investigation with former workers of the National Union of Former Workers of the Mint. The pieces ex-
plore the phantasmagoria of Mexican trade unionism. The cinematic genre of the SSM and its scenographic display allows to make vis-
ible spectra that still lurks the contemporary Mexican political system. Film genre that refers to the apparent normalized quiescence of a
unionized worker. The subject is actively involved in an economic-cinematographic fiction, that is, he works at the same working hours
throughout his life.

How is a unionized and third-world ghost plastically represented?

Starting from the invention of the SSM genre, Contreras intends to comment on the present through the body-economic-affective expe-
riences of forced retirement of workers, who become reappeared in an economy that intends to disappear them. In a nation-state that
holds so many secrets, the viewer becomes a detective and police semi-professional investigation into a method of artistic production.

What is their secret? What keeps them together? Nostalgia? Complicity? Anything worse? A slow murder that unfolds within your guts?
Paloma Contreras   Project selection   April, 2022
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Video still shoot at the National Union of
                                       Coin workers, 2017

                                       https://vimeo.com/280039020
                                       https://vimeo.com/246606275
                                       https://vimeo.com/280048317
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Video still shoot at the National Union of
                                       Coin workers, 2017
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Fidel Velázquez no está muerto / Fidel
                                       Velazquez is not dead, 2016

                                       Drawing series
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Fidel Velázquez no está muerto / Fidel
                                       Velazquez is not dead, 2016

                                       Drawing series
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                           April, 2022

                                       Fidel Velázquez no está muerto / Fidel
                                       Velazquez is not dead, 2016

                                       Drawing series
Paloma Contreras                                 Project selection                                                                                    April, 2022

Fanzine menstrual / Menstrual zine

The Menstrual zine project - called this way to echo the metabolic cycles of the body - which is made up of a series of artistic manifes-
tations that start from a typically literary format, but that adopt different supports, such as drawing, performance or installation. Experi-
menting with the poetic potential derived from the spoken word, and retaining the publication name to remember that any narrative pas-
sage is subject to endless poetic variations; and that the main strength of the poem is not only to free the text of the page, but to release
the word from the entire system that surrounds it. The publication works as a reflection of a process that is always the same, in a body that
preserves - and defends - its identity through the exercise of always being different. I started this project as a result of a traumatic event,
at first I had no idea of the future. I realized that I was telling the same story all the time and that every time I told it, the stage and my at-
tacker were changing little by little. I felt a determination to survive and use feminist thinking as political demand. From a narrative game
that simultaneously connects and disconnects from reality, it seeks to escape the authoritarian control of it and the need to submit to the
power of a single narrative. From here it is that we can intuit that in the words themselves there is also the potential to alter reality, and the
possibility of liberating our desires and impulses, from a imposed control.

Project presented at Biquini Wax EPS
Video of the publication: http://bit.ly/2lUP6
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Fanzine menstrual / Menstual zine,
                                       2016

                                       Performance view
                                       Multimedia installation
Paloma Contreras   Project selection                             April, 2022

                                       Fanzine menstrual / Menstual zine,
                                       2016

                                       Multimedia installation
Paloma Contreras   Project selection   April, 2022
Paloma Contreras                             CV                                                                                                                         April, 2022

Paloma Contreras Lomas                       Fanzine Menstrual, Biquini Wax EPS, Mexi-      Nuevo manifiesto de cine mexicano,           2015
(Mexico City, 1991)                          co City, Mexico                                Galería Lodos, Mexico City, Mexico           Sin Valor, 2a Muestra de Libros de Artista,
                                                                                                                                         Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporá-
STUDIES                                    GROUP SHOWS                                      Ahora en común. Más opacidad, MUCA           neo MUAC, Mexico City, Mexico
SOMA Educational program, SOMA, Mex- 2020 – 2021                                            Roma, Mexico City, Mexico
ico City, Mexico                           Otrxs mundxs, Museo Tamayo, Mexico                                                            RESIDENCIES
                                           City, Mexico                                     Kiosko, Fundación Alumnos 47, Mexico         2019, Lille 3000, Eldorado, Lille, France
Bachelor in Visual Arts, Escuela Nacional                                                   City, Mexico
de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmer- 2020                                                                                        GRANTS AND AWARDS
alda”, INBA, Mexico City, Mexico           Siembra, Biquini Wax EPS at kurimanzutto,        2017                                       2021, Jóvenes Creadores, alternative me-
                                           Mexico City, Mexico                              Cosas más extrañas (as part of Biquini Wax dia and performance, Fondo Nacional para
SOLO SHOWS                                                                                  EPS), GSD Kirkland Gallery of Harvard      la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA), Mexico
2021                                       ¡Cállate los ojos!, SOPORTE (in collabora-       University, Boston, USA                    City, Mexico
Area X, Art Basel Miami Beach Positions,   tion with Archivo Colectivo), Mexico City,
Pequod Co., Miami, USA                     Mexico                                           El Instituto para el Estudio del Fascismo,   2020, CIFO Cisneros Fontanals Grant, Cis-
                                                                                            collective performance with José Rodrigo     neros Fontanals Art Foundation, Emerging
Cartucho (la nación espiritual), siembra 33, 2019                                           García and Blake Shaw, AKI AORA, Tulum,      Artist Category, Miami, USA
kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Mexico            Biennale d’Architecture d’Orléans comis-       Mexico; performance as part of the Cam-
                                             sioned by Frida Escobedo, Frac Centre-Val      el Collective show; Museo Universitario de   2019, Jóvenes Creadores, Fondo Nacional
2020                                         de Loire, Orléans, France                      Arte Contemporáneo MUAC, Mexico City,        para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA), Mexi-
The Marshland of Souls, Pequod Co, Mexi-                                                    Mexico                                       co City, Mexico
co City, Mexico                              Prince.sse.es des Villes (as part of Biquini
                                             Wax EPS), Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France       If You Want to Do Something, Forget This   2019, Prince Claus Fund for Culture and
Dr. Psiquiatra o el más allá mexicano,                                                      Debt, and Remember It Later, Celaya Broth- Development Next Generation Grantee (as
Salón Silicón, Mexico City, Mexico           La maldita sed del oro (as part of Biquini     ers Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico           part of the collective Biquini Wax EPS), Am-
                                             Wax EPS), Lille 3000, Lille, France                                                       sterdam, The Netherlands
2017                                                                                        2016
Un gesto burocrático más que crítico,        La dinastía del pájaro, Galería de Arte An-    El arte del videotape contra la TV, Juan   2019, Research grant (received as part of
Ladrón Galería, Mexico City, Mexico          tonio López Sáenz, Culiacan, Mexico            Acha: por una nueva problemática artísti-  the collective Biquini Wax EPS and the Si-
                                                                                            ca, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City,    erra Hermosa Community Museum), Fun-
2015                                         2018                                           Mexico                                     dación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, Mexi-
Paloma Contreras                               CV                                         April, 2022

co City, Mexico                                OTHER ACTIVITIES
                                               2016-2020
2017, William Bullock-FEMAM Award of           Member of the artistic space Biquini Wax
Critical Museography (received as part of      EPS
the collective Biquini Wax EPS), Museo Uni-
versitario de Arte Contemporáneo MUAC       CURATORIAL ACTIVITY
in collaboration with the British Council,  2018
Mexico City, Mexico                         Collective curatorship with the group “Los
                                            Yacusi”, Melquíades Herrera: reporta-
COLLECTIONS                                 je plástico de un teorema cultural, MUAC,
CIFO Collection, Cisneros Fontanals Art     Mexico City, Mexico
Foundation, Miami, USA
                                            2016
Estrellita B. Brodsky Collection,           Collective curatorship with the group “Los
New York, USA                               Yacusi”, Juan Acha: por una nueva por-
                                            blemática artística, MAM, Mexico City,
Fundación M, Mexico City, Mexico            Mexico

KADIST, San Francisco, USA

Phillips/Yuyito, Mexico

PUBLICATIONS
El Más Allá Mexicano, in Mad Marginal
Cahier #5, Sternberg Press, 2020

Las botas de hule precioso, in La Tempestad
Magazine, 2018

El secuestro de Elenita, in Nuevos Manifies-
tos Mexicanos, Random House, 2017
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