Artist Statement
Your body is your first home, you have to take care of it because it’s the only one you’ve got.
As someone who’s body is seen as less valuable or profitable being a Latine lesbian with chronic pain, I use my art to explore the relationship I have with my body. By using tactile mediums that have historically been associated with racialized and gendered bodies in my practice, I explore the way art, race, and gender intersect and strengthen my connection to my Colombian and Brazilian roots.
The most important part of any piece of art and a large component of my practice is how people interact with my work. As a tactile person, I believe that having the viewer physically interact with my work helps them understand and interpret the work on their own. Recently I’ve been experimenting with combining text and tactile mediums that people are drawn to touch such as textural embroidery and weavings as a means of engaging the viewer.
Bio
Paola Coimbra Sanabria is a Bay Area artist working in printmaking, fiber art, digital media, and installation. With the perspective of a disabled, Latine lesbian, they seek to engage discussions around the politicization of the body within art and the ways in which art is displayed focusing on the body as both an intimate and political object. Paola aims to disrupt the traditional White Cube gallery experience by combining media that has traditionally been viewed as “craft” with those traditionally seen as “fine art”. Using this disruption, Paola invites the viewer to take the time to absorb and examine not only the work itself, but the very idea of differentiating between “craft” and “fine art”. One of the ways in which they have been disrupting the White Cube is through their social practice work where they collaborate with members of different marginalized communities to create work that centers their experiences.
Paola received their BFA in Printmaking from California College of the Arts and their MFA in Visual Studies and MA in Critical Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Their work focuses around the body as both an intimate and political object. Using their own body as a starting point, Paola explores openly discussing how gender, medicine, and race intersect with the body to create a dialogue about how society places value on different bodies and therefore people.
Paola received their BFA in Printmaking from California College of the Arts.
email: paola.coimbras@gmail.com