RESIDENT 2024
Paola Santander
CHILE
Transdisciplinary artist, trained as a visual artist and sculptor (University of Chile).
Since 2009, she has been independently exhibiting and producing her work. Her extensive sculpture series unfold in the format of sculptural installations.
Her conceptual processes revolve around the body, nature, and the boundaries of the unknown—an exploration or unraveling of the mystery of living and calling ourselves human. Working on soulful tensions and conflicted landscapes, her methodology tends to redistribute the various contending forces in multiple directions. In other words, her installations emit towards a new external order; the poetics of her work function as an organizer of urban misery.
Through her explorations, she identifies and collects remnants where genuine sacredness is concentrated—the recovery of ruins serves as both the material and the driving force of her work.
It is through installation as staging, and the body as living sculptural matter, that she began her independent training and research into new bodily languages—exploring movement, dance, and improvisation with a focus on developing new corporeal poetics as a foundation for performance, video art, real-time composition, immersive experiences, and amplified listening.
In parallel with her artistic practice, she has carried out numerous art education initiatives in marginalized contexts, worked as a research assistant in lithic archaeology for over nine years, and participated in heritage restoration projects in Santiago, among other endeavors.
She is currently co-director of Espacio Amaza, a meeting space for artists and a venue for experimental music. She lives and works in Santiago, Chile.