Open thought no.1 Sculpture

Paola Gracida is a Mexican American artist, born in 1979 in Mexico City, she received her Bachelor degree in Industrial design From the National Autonomous University of Mexico UNAM in Mexico City. She received a Master in Fine Arts from the Designhögskolan at Umea University in Sweden. She has exhibited work at the South Haven Center for the Arts in Michigan, she worked as a guest teacher at the Krasl Art Center in St. Joseph, Michigan and participated as independent artist at the Other Art Fair in Chicago and Dallas. She currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois My work explores the idea of adaptability and how we exist under continual change. It talks about a transitory nature, a fragile balance, an ambiguity. My process is a quest to defy gravity, im interested in forms that are challenging to build in clay. I consider each piece I make a resilient entity that has gone through changes. A piece that overcomes each stage agains gravity without breaking. I want each piece to create an encounter, to present itself as something deliberately willing to be redefined by another person. I am interested in creating a piece that conveys contrast and openness in a way it challenges a viewer’s perception. A piece that gives company to embrace uncertainty or contradiction. Much of this inspiration comes from life circumstances that led me to live abroad in different countries. Starting multiple times, each experience was dosed with contrasting cultures. Over the years I learned to contemplate them and experience a sense of belonging or otherness, awakening an interest in understanding how we exist as humans.