Vol. 11 Presenter: Paula Castillo
Presenting
In/Out
Summary
Artist Paula Castillo dissects corral fencing—a common farm commodity used frequently in New Mexico as a reference to a fascinating nexus of a lot of humane issues. Corral fencing as a structural archetype is easily recognized in the North American southwest and references a range of concepts from out-fencing antagonisms to in-fencing commodities. Generally speaking, fences are also a manifestation of an idea because they allow us to create otherness through territory designations. In this way, a fence became a way to write the language of American culture onto the land. In this storytelling series, Castillo will describe a sculptural allegory using corral fencing to reference both corral panels and a spectrum of opposites, including fluid resources that are entirely dislocal, bound to here and everywhere at once through a bewildering array of participants.
Bio
A Nueva Mexicana artist based in Belén, NM, Paula Castillo attended Yale University after high school and then worked in an electronics factory where she began to forge her early career in contemporary sculpture. The complex and malleable intersections between the physical and cultural landscape are the primary source of Castillo's inventiveness. She writes, "The human-made microcosms combined with the expansive natural environment have been the catalyst for my interest in the systems and spaces we inhabit." Castillo creates intimate and large-scale sculptural installations using generative patterns and structure to draw parallels between the fluid and solid forms of life: portraits of motion within a sense of place. Publications such as Hyperallergic, Washington Post, and the New York Times have reviewed her work. Castillo's sculptures are in various collections, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and has won numerous significant public art commissions.