Paola Estrella is a multimedia artist born in Mexico City and based in London. Auto-fiction and self-discovery are central to her practice, through which she conveys notions of intimacy, desire, and becoming. Estrella explores how new technologies impact the public and the private spheres and reflects on how the imaginary influences social conventions, gender, identity, and our notion of reality. Her work shifts across mixed media, video, installation, and performance as she dives into the blurred limits between the external and the internal world.
Estrella has a master’s degree from the Royal College of Art in Contemporary Art. She studied art direction and mixed media at Central Saint Martins and she has a BA in Graphic Design. Her work was selected for New Contemporaries 2022, she was shortlisted for the Hari Art Prize and the Lumen Prize, and she was awarded the CSR Travers Smith Art Award.
Estrella’s work has been exhibited internationally in South London Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, White Cube Gallery, Matts Gallery, the Franz Mayer Museum, the Museum of Mexico City, Out Sight Gallery in Seoul, and at Zhou Brothers Art Gallery in Chicago, among others.
Estrella co-founded Diasporas Now alongside Rieko Whitfield and Lulu Wang. Diasporas Now is a platform for expanded performance by the global majority opening up contemporaneous discourses on displaced identities, and celebrates cross-diasporic solidarity. Diasporas Now offers curated performance programmes and academic services for educational institutions.