Simona Schaffer

I was born in Mexico City in the 70‘s and have lived in Barcelona since 2006. As a teenager I lived in the US for 2 years. I was brought up in an unconventional family. So even though I have a middle-class background, I have always felt a bit like an outsider, somewhat on the margins of mainstream society.

My artwork has usually been connected to the places where I live and to my everyday life. I am intrigued by people I see on the street. Their lives may be quite different from mine; yet they worry, get angry, love and suffer just as everyone does. These random glimpses insipire me to create. I seek to find, in personal experiences, those things that are common to everyone and through which we bond with others and conform a society.

Each place has left its imprint on me and on my work. In a similar fashion I try to let each tool and each material I use find its own expression and leave its own footprint; just as we can read each person’s story through the scars and imprints on their body and their being. In this sense, accidents are welcomed and incorporated into the work of art. Manual work and traditional techniques are a refuge that I use to withstand the violent assaults of consumerism and digital technologies that seem ...

I completed high school at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas. Subsequently, I pursued a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts at the National School of Fine Arts, now the Faculty of Art and Design at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in Mexico. In 2006, I moved to Barcelona to pursue a Master's degree in Visual Culture Studies at the University of Barcelona, and I obtained the Advanced Studies Diploma for the doctoral course 'Assailed Reality, Creative Positions,' also at the Faculty of Fine Arts at UB. Currently, I am enrolled in a Master's program in Cultural Management at the Faculty of Economics and Business at UB.

My artwork has been shown in various cities in Mexico, the US and Spain.