MARUGAN RICART, PAOLA MARIA

I am an academic researcher and feminist curator, originally from Spain, but I have lived in Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City for the last ten years. I hold a PhD in Feminist Studies from the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. The doctoral thesis has been awarded by the Laureana Wright Competition (2023) of the Scientific Research Center for Gender Studies (CIEG) of the UNAM, Mexico City. I have a Master’s Degree in Art and Contemporary Culture from the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and I am graduated in Philosphy at the University of Valencia (Spain).

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Center for Gender Studies of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City. In my research I analyse the role of women in the territorial defence of Río Sonora (Mexico) after the socio-environmental conflict of 2014 due to mining activity in the region.

In addition, I was trained in dance at the Martin Vargas Flamenco Dance Ballet during the years 1996-2003 in Valencia (Spain). Although I have not worked professionally as a dancer for many years, I am currently a dance practitioner in workshops and courses of flamenco, Afro-Brazilian, African and contemporary dance. My trajectory as a researcher is deeply imbued with a dancing thought-movement that reveals itself both at the epistemological and methodological level in all my research projects.

My research is dedicated to Cultural and artistic practices in Latin American;

Creative Processes in Contemporary Art; Women, Strategies of Resistance, Political Fictions, realational ontologies; Whiteness, Racism, Feminist intersectional thinking. In my research I have been concerned with elaborating a way of thinking that articulates the relationships between culture, politics and power from the perspective of Latin American Cultural Studies. I am interested in the production of critical knowledge as a political practice from artistic creation that is inscribed in feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles.

As a curator, I carried out projects in Brazil, Mexico and Spain. My career has made her understand that curatorship is a way of making research from a commitment to a transdisciplinary and collective intellectual practice. In addition, curatorial research is the strategy she has found to connect scholar work with society.

I am a member of the Feminist Network Culture and Power. Dialogues from the South (Mexico) and I also am a member of the research group Epistemologies, narratives and feminist affective policies of the Pontifice Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil).