Paula Zambrano

Paula Zambrano is a writer, researcher and art historian working as Curator of Programmes of the Contemporary Art Society in London, UK. She started her career in Mexico, graduating with a BA in Art History at Universidad Iberoamericana, and working in curatorial and research positions in Curare Critical Space for the Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca. In 2012 she moved to the UK, where she completed an MA in Curating at the Royal College of Art, followed by a PhD in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, London. Her doctoral thesis, ‘Curating Time, Contingency, Anachronism, Flirtation’, explores paradoxes, resistances and perversions in three counter-temporalities. Zambrano regularly publishes Friday Dispatches for the Contemporary Art Society in London. She also contributes articles, exhibition reviews, artists’ profiles, and other texts related to art criticism and theory in numerous international journals and magazines. Past examples include a review of the 59th Venice Biennale ‘The Milk of Dreams’, curated by Cecilia Alemani, published by Routledge in the academic journal ‘The Senses and Society’; an article about Fabián Cháirez’s paintings of indigenous and transgender bodies shown at the UK Mexican Arts Society, London, published in ‘La Tempestad’; a review of Marysia Lewandowska’s feminist histories in the exhibition ‘It’s About Time’, curated by Ralph Rugoff during the 58th Venice Biennale, published in the ‘Journal of Curatorial Studies’. She has further published interviews with Paula Rego, Carolyn Christov Bakargier, Sophie Calle, and other international artists and curators. Over the past decade, she has curated numerous independent projects in partnership with museums, art festivals, commercial galleries and not-for-profit organisations across the UK and internationally. Some examples include the exhibition ‘Against Time’ at Glasgow International, Scotland; the Mail Art project ‘Correspondence’ at Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art, Oaxaca; the residency/exhibition ‘By Indirections Find Directions Out’ at Yamakiwa Gallery, Japan; the moving-image programme ‘Cuts to Violence’ at FUSO Anual de Videoarte, Lisbon. She has developed teaching experience at the Royal College of Art, Goldsmiths University, Chelsea College of Arts, in London, the University of Northampton and De Montfort University Leicester, and has acted as a Guest Speaker at York St John University, the University of Leeds and the post-academic residency Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.