Artist in residence, Stockholm, March 1 – May 27, 2023

Paula Baeza Pailamilla is a Mapuche artist who lives and works between Chile and Switzerland. Paula’s work explores the differens of cultural, political and economic colonization, from the perspective of being a native minority, and living in a territory that today is called Chile.

The work can be seen as an aesthetic and conceptual crossing between gender, race and class; conditions that cross their body history, developing an anti-colonial search from a Mapuche gaze. Paula is also a part of the Mapuche collective Rangiñtulewfü since 2016. A collective where they work with the possibilities of an indigenous feminism and the champurria encourage.

Since 2020 the collective has published the digital project Yene: magazine of art, thought and writings from Wallmapu and Abya Yala.

Photo: Danny Reveco

Paula Baeza Pailamilla

While at IASPIS, Paula will develop a performative and audiovisual work that addresses language as an identity issue in the migration processes. A work that started with their own process of integration when moving to Switzerland in 2022. But also raised questions about their own indigenous, Latin American and queer identity in this new context.

Baeza Pailamilla studied Contemporary Dance Pedagogy at ARCIS University in Santiago de Chile (2014), they obtained a Master in Theory and History of Art at the University of Chile (2021) being a CONICYT scholarship holder. Their work has been exhibited at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; European Capital of Culture, Novi Sad, Serbia; Art Space, Zürich; Spain Cultural Center, Santiago; and the 11th Berlin Biennale, Germany. Their work is part of four art collections in Chile, including Il Posto and the recent addition to the National Museum of Fine Arts, being the second non-male indigenous artist to enter a public collection in the country. They are currently an Eyebeam grantee artist (2023) in an online residency in New York, USA.