Exhibition at Frankfurter Kunstverein
What is Thought in the Thought of People, 2015
Video. 17 min.
A story for the revolution
The archipelago of the Philippines, a Southeast Asian country of more than 7,000 islands named after monarch Philip II, was under Spanish rule for nearly three centuries, from 1517 until the outbreak of the US-supported Philippine Revolution. After the Spanish-American War, Spain lost its last colonies: Cuba, as well as the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, the latter two becoming dependencies of the United States in 1898.
Paloma Polo has an in-depth knowledge of the Philippines, where she has lived since 2013. After an initial investigation into the land ownership claims of indigenous communities, she observed how initiatives led by civil society organisations and marginalised communities were violently repressed. She became personally involved with the reality of a country marked by the confrontation between the government and the New People’s Army (NPA). The NPA is the armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines, operating underground, whose objective for more than five decades has been, in the artist’s words, ‘emancipation, social justice, the implementation of new socio-political, cultural and land protection models’. The result of her living together with these guerrilla units is the film El Barro de la Revolución (The Mud of the Revolution), two hours of filmic material that, without interviews or voice-over, is closer to direct cinema than to conventional documentary.
“The Earth of the Revolution”. Interview to Paloma Polo. Kamchatka.
“The Earth of the Revolution”. Interview to Paloma Polo
Kamchatka. Cultural Analysis Magazine
MIGUEL ERRAZU and ALEJANDRO PEDREGAL interview PALOMA POLO.
Paloma Polo's (1983) artistic practice has progressed through a continuous immersion in zones of unrest, unrest, and struggle. His proposal is to devise and stage stories and stories that capture the emergence of political thought in people, thus exploring particular social configurations as preconditions or potentialities for political change. This approach requires, from his perspective, paying attention to worldviews that are violently suppressed in the creation and normalization of political categories —even those that are emancipatory—,
in addition to observing political imaginaries that are made invisible or remain unrecognized. Polo's artistic practice is one of situated inquiry, based on conversation, often through political involvement and personal engagement.
His audiovisual narrations and fictionalizations are understood as a tentative mediation aimed at understanding the remodeling of sociopolitical relations in the set of its complex movements.
"Superposición". Paloma Polo. 14th Mar - 29th May 2021
You can now virtually visit Paloma Polo's last show at our gallery in calle Madera. Check here the complete show in 3D!
Paloma Polo featured in Vanity Fair magazine
Paloma Polo now opens her first show at the Sabrina Amrani gallery. Called Overlay, she brings together here work from a few years ago, and shows that politics is in everything and everything permeates, even the supposedly ultra-rational terrain of science. The pieces in the exhibition - photos, collages, slide projections, photographic plates and a drawing - are based on her project The Path of Totality, which studies how ancient scientific expeditions to observe eclipses - such as the one he undertook to the island in 1919 from Prince the British astrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington, who allowed to verify Einstein's theory of relativity - they also had their dark side in the form of colonial exploitation.
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía MNCARS acquires a work by Paloma Polo for the permanent collection.
Sabrina Amrani is pleased to announce the acquisition of Paloma Polo’s artwork El Barro de la Revolución for the permanent collection of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía MNCARS (Spain).
What social conditions give rise to political change? This question propelled Polo's immersion in the revolutionary movement in the Philippines. The work, coexistence, and filmic inquiry she undertook in a guerrilla front were the culmination of three years of research and reflection engaged in the political struggles of this country.
CA2M hosts an exhibition by the artist Paloma Polo that makes visible the long revolutionary struggle of the Filipino people
A lush Philippine rainforest as a backdrop, the sound of cicadas as a soundtrack and the life of the members of the New People's Army - a guerrilla unit in the Asian country - are the ingredients of the documentary work El barro de la revolución (The Mud of the Revolution) by the artist Paloma Polo.
Paloma Polo: «Philippine guerrillas seek cultural and social transformation»
El Cultural interviews Paloma Polo. The artist opens at the Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo (Móstoles) El Barro de la Revolución, an exhibition whose main work gives it its title. In it she delves into the daily life of a Philippine guerrilla front that has been fighting underground for more than 50 years.
CA2M presents the exhibition ‘El Barro de la Revolución’
This exhibition includes several works made by Paloma Polo from her stay in the Philippines since 2013, the last of these works being the film 'El Barro de la Revolución', which gives title and serves as the central axis to the show, materializing a long process of research and production of Polo in the context of the Philippine revolution.
The Lonely Spanish at the Venice Biennale
"I am happy to be able to show my work in this event, and that it means that there will be Spanish representation. For the artistic environment in which most Western creators operate, participating in this biennial legitimises the work in some contexts. I hope that this will be a support that will help me to produce future projects.
An eclipse hunter at the Reina Sofía
She has studied in depth the expeditions of the early 20th century aimed at observing these events and has compiled an archive, unique in the world, of more than 3,000 images of gadgets and devices designed to bring the stars closer, to see the light from maximum darkness.
Paloma Polo at Reina Sofía Museum: Posición Aparente
Posición aparente is part of a research project around the scientific expeditions that were carried out during the 19th and early 20th centuries to spot and document different astronomical phenomena. A project with which Paloma Polo (Madrid, 1983) tries to explore the close relationship between scientific development and the colonial expansion of the European imperialist powers.
Online group exhibition with the Paloma Polo: I Got You Under My Skin
The group show talks about the artist’s need to create and to keep in contact. For this first collaboration with Sabrina Amrani, Palomo Polo's participates with her iconic work A Fleeting Moment of Dissidence Becomes Fossilised and Lifeless After the Moment has Passed II.
Paloma Polo receives the Multiverse Grant for Creation in Video Art from the BBVA Foundation.
Focused on supporting the creative work of Spanish video artists and promoting the dissemination of their works, the BBVA Foundation, in collaboration with Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, awards Paloma Polo the Multiverse Grant for Video Art Creation for the development of a project which will culminate with an exhibition of it in 2022.