BIO

BIOGRAPHY​

 © Yuliia Frolova, 2022

CONTACT

​info@palomaayala.com

IG  @palomito.a

Paloma Ayala (b.1980, Matamoros, Mexico) is a visual artist interested in empowering the relationship between domestic living strategies and political contexts. Her work fictionalizes historical, ecological or social problematics as means of analysis and critique. Paloma´s projects nourish visions of connection between human and more than human spheres, they dream of emancipation from marginalizing dominant structures, and emphasize practices of care across different topographies and borders. Her favorite spaces to work range from kitchen to river shore, from international crossing bridge to agricultural land, from community meeting to aquelarre. Her work takes the form of publications, videos, installations, reading/cooking sessions, lecture performances, and workshops directed to different kinds of public, including humans outside of cultural institutions.

Paloma’s work is rooted in her home, the eastern US/MX border landscapes, simultaneously blooming in her current base in Zurich. She has a Bachelor in Fine Arts (Universidad de Monterrey 2002), a Teaching Degree (Arte AC 2003) and a Master in Fine Arts (Zürcher Hochschule der Künste 2017).

Her professional background as a teacher and community worker has led to the development of a community praxis focused on care. She co-curates the queer, feminist and BIPoC focused art space Les Comnplices*. She collaborates with curator Adriana Dominguez, cultural producer tara lasrado and environmental scientist Kenza Benabderrazik in the transdisciplinary project Alimento, dealing with food systems, agricultural injustice and agroecology. She leads the project KARAOKE READINGS with queer border musician Luna León. 

Selected Exhibitions:

Más acá de lo (I)Real, Villa Bernasconi Centre d'art de la Ville de Lancy, Geneve​, 2026

​Werkschau 2025, Kunstmusuem Winterthur, 2025

Loving Shedhalle, Shedhalle Zurich, 2025​
Karachi Biennial 24, Karachi 2024
Into the Rhythm: From Score to Contact Zone, ARKO, Seoul 2024
Alimento, La Cápsula and SAE Greenhouse ETH, Zürich 2023

Here and Now: Anti-colonial Interventions, Ludwig Museum, Köln 2022-2023
Underland: Emotions are Oceans. RADIUS Center for Contemporary Art and Ecology, Delft 2022
Habitar Tierras Fronterizas, MACT Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Tamaulipas, Matamoros 2022
Picking out images from my soul's eye, DISTRICT Berlin 2021

She has been artist in residency in Mouhit, Tunisia (2026), KIOSKO Santa Cruz BO (2024), U-jazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art Warsaw (2022) and Platteforum Denver (2020), among others.

Articles:
«K-B NOTEBOOK, Werkschau 2025» by Julia Schmidt, 

«Привет Complicxs, das ist ein Loveletter 4U»

by Vic Kiefer for RosaRot: Zeitschrift für Feminismus und Geschlechterfragen, Nr. 60
«An der Grenze zwischen Wahrheit und Fiktion»

by Vic Kiefer for Die Republik
«Artist Profile: Paloma Ayala»

by Cori Anderson for DARIA Denver Art Review, Inquiry, and Analysis