Paula Santomé

Paula Santomé fluidly works between drawing, sculpture and installation within her research-based practice. Using clay, graphite and aluminium as her primary tools, Santomé examines the resistant potential of youth culture. Parties and clubs in particular serve as engaging contexts for Santomé to work with, reading these gatherings as anti-capitalist spaces of cultural exchange and communion. Her clay reliefs depict dancing clubbers, or an aluminium sculpture might crystalize two lovers kissing. Caught in a state of defiance and abandon, her work heralds figures who reject dominant social structures and embrace individuality. Santomé also often weaves mythologies into her bodies of work, finding intimacy and empowerment in transgressive figures such as Medusa. The clay works are mesmerising to encounter, like unearthing archaeological fragments,yet what comes into view is instead a contemporary scene of partygoers. Santomé’s embrace of mythology in a feminist lens links her work to artists such as Monica Sjöö, Nancy Spero or Ana Mendieta, yet her melding of the contemporary within this classical reading creates a novel space for Santomé to work within.