Paola Vega

Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires, 1980

            Paola Vega's work has emerged as one of the most interesting of the 2000s, not only due to her painting practice but also because of her exploration of painting as a problem. Trained as a historian, in her hometown of Bahía Blanca, she also attended intensive workshops with great masters like Jorge Gumier Maier and Diana Aisenberg, which shaped her trajectory around a set of formal, ethical, and political concerns that would mold the rest of her work. Thus, her body of work and her roles as a curator, manager, and archivist extend and update the local tradition of abstract painting while placing into historical context a subject (women) and an art form (painting) generally marked by sexist narratives in national art.

            The workshop, the domestic space, conjugal life have become areas of strong interest for reflecting on the relationship between painting and gender. From the tranquility of the studio to the living room space, to the creation of a 300-meter urban mural, "Esplendor," on one of the embankments of the Riachuelo in Buenos Aires, created between 2016 and 2018, Paola Vega posits an ethic that seeks to trace the points of contact between a painting that still lives and a spectator who still feels. Her works appear as blurred images or smudged memories, where each viewer can decode different experiences. They are oil paintings with warm colors, earthy and pastel tones, creating a unique and beautiful universe.

            She is a co-founder of the group "pintorAs" since 2009, which she continues to participate in, organizing collective exhibitions of contemporary Argentine painters, and has worked to showcase the work of artists such as Ana Sokol, Lía Correa Morales, Juana Butler, and Dignora Pastorello. One of the outcomes of this work is the publication in 2020 of "Las Promesas" by Editorial Iván Rosado, a book dedicated to the archival material of some of these forgotten figures. Additionally, she has received numerous grants and incentives to strengthen this work of unearthing and caring for this hidden heritage.