Paulina Freifeld

"Extranjenos" is a project that is inspired by my ancestors living in Mexico after fleeing Europe for being Jews. Starting from a family photographic archive, I try to recontextualize daily dynamics, translating them into my present. Images, captured mainly by my grandfather and great-grandfather, help to translate and understand the culture shock that my relatives experienced in the past, as well as my current position within the family evolution. Extranjenos invites us to feel how strange a space can be.
— Paulina Freifeld

Paulina's paintings emerge from a drift, collecting family memories that direct her to a distant time and to a diffuse and ambiguous place. Looking at her ancestors, she ends up seeing herself in a mirror, defining her identity and locating herself in the present tense. With courage, she decides to take a retrospective action to become a participant, thus building a new path that is supported by the stories that precede her. 

By collecting photographs, Freifeld puts together puzzles between symbols and relationships to tell a new story. The images that make up the scenes act as fragments portraying the characters that appear in them, relocating them in a lyrical space. From her painting, her own lineage intervenes out of a desire to reconfigure the links and roles between each of the characters. 

In a game of gazes, the viewer finds himself facing indecipherable situations, immediately leading him towards nostalgia. The painter implants in herself, and in whom she looks at her work, intimate memories that never occurred, through the discovery of her own genealogy. Each brushstroke is an impulse to look, live and tell.

— Michelle Sitton

Guided tour with the artist on April 24 at 5PM.