On Seeking Liberation Through Art: Paloma Mayorga
As part of our ongoing digital residency, we’re spotlighting an interview with artist and curator Paloma Mayorga. In conversation with interdisciplinary creative and writer Vera Claeys, Paloma talks about transitioning from painting to photography, the first time she ever exhibited her scans and how her creative process has changed her idea of self-image.
Interview conducted and written by Vera Claeys, April 2020.
ABOUT PALOMA MAYORGA:
Paloma Mayorga is an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator based in Austin, Texas. She uses unconventional forms of photography to document the body and other natural objects, creating intricate self-portraits that beg the viewer to consider the subtleties of touch.
A note from Vera Claeys: I was introduced to Paloma Mayorga’s work in the Spring of 2010. I was visiting Southwestern University for admitted students day and had the pleasure of seeing her senior art show at the Sarofim School of Fine Arts. For an 18-year-old kid visiting from Mission, Texas, I felt like I was floating. Liberated and confused. Comforted, yet weary. Her work was like taking an ice bath I didn’t know I needed. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her repertoire evolve in a riveting dance between still life and lucid scans.
Vera Claeys: I want to start by thanking you for taking the time to share your ideas with us today. I also would like to mention that when I first met you and saw your work, you were focusing on an entirely different medium, and that was painting. What was the precedent for that shift?
Paloma Mayorga: Thank you, Vera, for taking the time to interview me and letting me share a little more about what I do! Indeed, I had been working on oil paintings when we first met right after I finished university, where I studied painting. After graduation, I spent a lot of time with myself and became fascinated by self portraits, specifically the idea of people creating an image in their likeness, subtly revealing their innerworkings, experiences, emotions.
Around that time, I began getting to know the work of contemporary photographers who focused on photographing people, many of whom I actually met through you. I feel like I became emotionally invested in their aesthetics, and I began experimenting with a camera myself -- creating more self portraits because I was too shy to photograph others. My mind was constantly racing with images and ideas, and photography seemed to be the only medium that could keep up.
Vera: I imagine you were eager to present your scans to the public after a generous time of introspection and developing your new works. What was the first exhibit you had that was centered on your scans, and when did you decide to present them after being a painter for so many years?
Paloma: I believe it was about a year after I started creating in that medium that I showed them publicly for the first time. I was working on a portrait-based exhibit at the Women’s Community Center of Central Texas in 2014 titled Cruelty Free that dealt with the negative self-talk that too-often is in our vocabulary as young women. I included the first six portraits I ever took of other people, along with three 8 x 10 inch prints from my scan series. Up until that point, I had been painting on large canvases, so printing these works small-scale just didn’t cut it. I wanted for people to get lost in the details that captivated me so much and made these works worth seeing. Emotions.
Two years later, I was invited to have a solo exhibit at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center composed almost entirely of my scans. I had to fill a vast space in a short period, and the open layout of the gallery and tall ceilings allowed me to show these works the way I had always envisioned—giant! The textures and colors of the plants become more intricate and nonrepresentational when you enlarge the photos. It’s almost painterly. This was precisely what made me feel comfortable with making the transition between exhibiting paintings to focusing mostly on the scans.
Vera: Since then, has your identity as a woman evolved moving from painting self portraits to putting your physical self on display via scans? I assume with painting there’s a lot more time and space to alter the state you’re in versus taking a scan of your natural form.
Paloma: There is definitely an aspect of time in the works that changed once I shifted from one medium to another. When painting self portraits, I capture different moments in time, each filled with their own state of being, that all conclude in one comprehensive image. In some ways, painting forced me to look at myself a lot more, allowing for both experimentation and criticism of my physical body. In comparison, the act of scanning is instantaneous, and doesn’t allow my eye to linger in the creative process. The size of the scanner bed also makes it so that I can’t observe or capture my full body in one image. I’m limited to seeing my body as isolated parts—hands, lips, ear, breast, etc—making it a much more controlled way of documenting the body. I think this has made me interpret my body and self as another component of nature, much like the flowers and plants I work with in my scans. There is a wonderful sense of liberation that comes with learning to recognize my body in this way. It’s not something that has to be altered to conform to societal standards of beauty, it’s simply something that just is. Because of this, I look at my body in a much more tender way and value my individual identity as a woman.
Vera: I appreciate that through the lack of distortion, your scans allow clarity of your self image. I know that you have some upcoming projects in the works. I’m curious to know how COVID-19 along with shelter in place restrictions have altered the work you’re creating and future collaborations.
Paloma: It’s certainly pushed back many of the projects I had planned for this summer, including my [in-person] bbatx residency, and a group exhibition at Artpace curated by Annette Carlozzi that I am really looking forward to. The shelter-in-place restrictions, and more so people’s resistance to comply, has made me look at some of my most recent works in a new light. In the gelatin series that I created during my Crit Group residency at The Contemporary Austin last year, I play with the idea of boundaries and our desire to touch. It’s interesting to see how some people struggle with the restrictions, while others accept and work hard to respect them, knowing that our individual actions affect others. This concept is definitely something that I want to explore further and will remain in the forefront of my mind with any future collaborations.
Vera: The first time I saw your gelatin pieces, I definitely wanted to try one. That’s what I enjoyed the most, having to find the balance between desire and restraint.
Paloma, thank you again for looking inward and sharing your ideas and future plans with us. I hope we get to do this again sooner than later. I’m looking forward to seeing your new projects this year!
ABOUT THE WRITER: Vera Claeys is an interdisciplinary creative, currently based in Berkeley, California. Her work has been published in Nasty Magazine and The Normal School Magazine, and her recently published zine, Cool, Calm, and Rejected has been distributed internationally. To learn more about Vera’s work, visit veraclaeys.com.