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Paloma Contreras April, 2022
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 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 Project selection April, 2022
Area X, 2021
Exhibition view, Art Basel Miami Beach
2021 Positions Sector, Miami Convention
Center, Miami, USA
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 Project selection April, 2022
Area X, 2021
Exhibition view, Art Basel Miami Beach
2021 Positions Sector, Miami Convention
Center, Miami, USA
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 Project selection April, 2022
Jeff Goldblum en el Día de la Indepen-
dencia, 2021
Foam and helmet
Variable dimensions
Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Details of Jeff Goldblum en el Día de la
Independencia, 2021
Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Details of Area X, 2021Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Details of Area X, 2021Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Details of Area X, 2021Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Details of Jeff Goldblum en el Día de la
Independencia, 2021Paloma 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
CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Cartucho (la nación espiritual), 2021
Exhibition view, kurimanzutto, Mexico
CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Cartucho (la nación espiritual), 2021
Exhibition view, kurimanzutto, Mexico
CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Cartucho (la nación espiritual), 2021
Exhibition view, kurimanzutto, Mexico
CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Oficio de tinieblas, 2021
Set of 3: Foam, vinyl, plush fabric and
plastic
266 x 340 x 473 cmPaloma 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 cmPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Obscurana y calentura, 2021
Graphite on paper
60 x 51.5 x 2 cmPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Sacrosindicato, 2021
Graphite on paper
67 x 53 x 2 cmPaloma 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 CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
El pantano de las ánimas / The Marsh-
land of Souls, 2020
Exhibition view, Pequod Co, Mexico CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
El pantano de las ánimas / The Marsh-
land of Souls, 2020
Exhibition view, Pequod Co, Mexico CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
El pantano de las ánimas / The Marsh-
land of Souls, 2020
Exhibition view, Pequod Co, Mexico CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Otrxs mundxs, 2020-2021
Exhibition view, Museo Tamayo, Mexico
CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Otrxs mundxs, 2020-2021
Exhibition view, Museo Tamayo, Mexico
CityPaloma 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
2019Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Sombrero de Hidroeléctrica / Hydro-
electric hat, 2020
Plush hat, velvet, stuffed fabric, different
textiles
100 x 110 cmPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
El Monte / The Mount, 2019
Digital photo
Variable measuresPaloma 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 cmPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
El Más Allá Mexicano / The Mexican
Beyond, 2020
Digital photography
Variable measuresPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Dr. Psiquiatra o El Más Allá Mexicano /
Dr. Psychiatrist or The Mexican Beyond,
2020
Exhibition view, Salón Silición, Mexico
CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Pistola Nerf de peluche / Nerf stuffed
gun, 2019
60 x 35 cm
Pistola de peluche / Stuffed gun, 2019
Variable measuresPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
El monte / The Mount, 2019
Hat lined with velvet, wool, plush and plas-
tic
25 x 120 x 120 cmPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Dr. Psiquiatra o El Más Allá Mexicano /
Dr. Psychiatrist or The Mexican Beyond,
2020
Exhibition view, Salón Silición, Mexico
CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Dr. Psiquiatra o El Más Allá Mexicano /
Dr. Psychiatrist or The Mexican Beyond,
2020
Exhibition view, Salón Silición, Mexico
CityPaloma 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 cmPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
La Espera Femenina/ The female wait,
2019
Mixed media
50 x 50 cmPaloma 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 stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
The South Dramas. First chapter, 2019
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
The South Dramas. First chapter, 2019
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
The South Dramas. First chapter, 2019
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Episodio cazafantasmas. Second chap-
ter, 2019
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Episodio cazafantasmas. Second chap-
ter, 2019
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Huele de noche. Third chapter, 2020
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Huele de noche. Third chapter, 2020
Video stillPaloma 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 stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Plano americano / American shot, 2019
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Plano americano / American shot, 2019
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Plano americano / American shot, 2019
Video stillPaloma 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 minPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Biquini Wax EPS.
Sa La Na, A Yuum, Iasos /
Laissez Faire – Laissez Passer, 2019
DetailPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Biquini Wax EPS.
Sa La Na, A Yuum, Iasos /
Laissez Faire – Laissez Passer, 2019
DetailPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Biquini Wax EPS.
Sa La Na, A Yuum, Iasos /
Laissez Faire – Laissez Passer, 2019
DetailPaloma 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/345797943Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
La maldita sed del oro / The damn thirst
of gold, 2019
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
La maldita sed del oro / The damn thirst
of gold, 2019
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
La maldita sed del oro / The damn thirst
of gold, 2019
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
La maldita sed del oro / The damn thirst
of gold, 2019
Video stillPaloma 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/279603826Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
cret life of dogs, 2018
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
cret life of dogs, 2018
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
cret life of dogs, 2018
Video stillPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
cret life of dogs, 2018
Installation view MUCA Roma, Mexico
CityPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
La vida secreta de los perros / The se-
cret life of dogs, 2018
Installation view MUCA Roma, Mexico
CityPaloma 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 performancePaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Poema maquilista / Industrial poem,
2018
Poem and performancePaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Poema maquilista / Industrial poem,
2018
Poem and performancePaloma 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/280048317Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Video still shoot at the National Union of
Coin workers, 2017Paloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Fidel Velázquez no está muerto / Fidel
Velazquez is not dead, 2016
Drawing seriesPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Fidel Velázquez no está muerto / Fidel
Velazquez is not dead, 2016
Drawing seriesPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Fidel Velázquez no está muerto / Fidel
Velazquez is not dead, 2016
Drawing seriesPaloma 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 installationPaloma Contreras Project selection April, 2022
Fanzine menstrual / Menstual zine,
2016
Multimedia installationPaloma 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, 2017You can also read
