We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Paulina Mendoza a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Paulina , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Covid has brought about so many changes – has your business model changed?

“Covid begun four years ago.” I just had this conversation with someone today. After a year of isolation I understood there was going to be a before and after. What’s unbelievable is that the before feels like last night’s dream and the after keeps collecting years of exhaustion.
My practice as a portrait photographer stopped completely due to social distancing. Now that I’m picking it up again I decided to truly monetize from it rather than keeping photography as solely artistic and pure.

Paulina , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a Mexican artist based in Brooklyn. I started my journey in Austin, Texas working behind the scenes for galleries and collaborating with other artists. The combination of both ignited an interest in curatorial projects and drive me to work with multiple groups. The more serious one being Thousand Faces, a partnership with my very own best friend. I moved to Houston, TX to carry out my vision of moving artists across the state to widen their audience. Then 2020 came along and to avoid feeling stuck I decided it was time to produce my own work once again and decided to apply for grad school. I finished my MFA in Studio Art in 2022, and now here we are.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The pandemic hit us all. At the beginning of 2020 I was living in Houston, TX working as a medical Interpreter, recording short stories, and making my way up as an independent curator. The mandated isolation cancelled any sort of interaction possible so the creative outlets had to change -I went back to oil paint and produced over 20 portraits and ice cream cones in just a few months. I decided it was time to once again shine a spotlight onto my own work, and to prove my commitment to myself I applied for grad school. I moved to New York in 2020 for a Master’s degree program.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

By the time I decided to get back into academics, I had been out of school for almost 5 years. I still had good relationships with my older professors but I felt like I needed a more recent reference. I audited a a class in The University of Houston under the instruction of Dorota Biczel. The class was called Global Modernisms, and although my schedule made it impossible for me to fully complete the course, the material completely shifted my view of Art. My work naturally took a turn towards visual and language decolonization, which created an undeniably influence on the approach and materials I wanted to use. This, along with the mental copying needed to survive the changing world, my work became almost a religious practice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.paulinamendoza.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p_asinpurple/?igsh=N2E3ZnpiMzJwMjlx&utm_source=qr
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulina-mendoza-valdez-mfa-2909a4153/

Image Credits
All images are mine