Alicia Paz

Alicia Paz is an artist based in London, working internationally. Born in Mexico City, Paz graduated from UC Berkeley, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris, Goldsmiths College and Royal College of Art London.

Over several years, Alicia Paz has focused on the tension between artifice/ illusion and the veracity of actual processes involved in painting, exposing the duplicitous nature of representation. Through her work, she explores notions of hybridity, assemblage, and metamorphosis, focusing particularly on the female figure: the self is experienced and presented as multiple, fluid, paradoxical. Paz's paintings are as much portraits as they are landscapes, combining references that range from erudite painting or the history of the painted image, to citations of advertising images or comics. Inhabiting fantastical and exotic landscapes, Paz's feminine subjects become fused and combined with organic life. Strange and unsettling visions of tree-women and monster-women also represent the fusion of the subject with ''painting'' itself: she often depicts amphibian or plant-like figures “weeping” pigment, their limbs, hair, and various ornamental accoutrements mud-caked and dripping, as if extracted from a colourful, post-cognitive swamp.

In August 2017 Paz unveiled her first public sculpture commission at in Magdeburg, titled ''Insel der Puppen (Island of Dolls),'' in steel and enamel. Paz is working on a larger research and production project exploring the network of women that are playing an important rule in her life, personally and professionally. Her project is supported by the Arts Council England. She developed her research it into three exhibition, each specifically adapted to the location and with new work for each show. The first installation was ''Río y Mar (River and Sea)'' at the Beecroft Art Gallery in Southend-on-Sea, part of ''Estuary 2021'', followed by ''River Makers'' at the Visual Arts Centre in North Lincolnshire, both in 2021, and finally ''Juntas (Together)'' at the in Paris in early 2022. Provided by Wikipedia