Daniela Gomez Paz

BIO

Daniela Gomez Paz is an artist who utilizes found objects and various kinds of natural and manmade fibers to weave, draw, paint, collage with, and make sculpture. Born in Cali, Colombia, she immigrated to Queens, New York. Her pursued path in the arts and background in pedagogy led her to facilitate a wide range of programs with children, youth, seniors and families in schools, museums, and community centers. She acquired a Double Degree: BFA [Painting/Drawing] & BA [Art History] from SUNY Purchase School of Art and Design and a MAT [Masters in Art Teaching] from Queens College. She is a recipient of the Signal Fire Fellowship for the Wide-Open Studio Backpacking Residency Program and was selected as an artist in residence to Arquetopia’s 2022 Andean Weaving Instructional Program in Cusco, Peru. Currently, she resides in New Haven and is earning her MFA in the Yale School of Art’s Painting and Printmaking program.

Interview with Daniela Gomez Paz 

Hi Daniela. I know you immigrated from Cali, Colombia to Queens at a young age. How have the places you’ve lived, as well as your cultural background, informed your work?

In many ways actually, but what I feel most present at the moment in the studio is the music of my culture. For me, salsa music is the connecting thread between Cali and Queens. When my family and I moved to Queens, I felt its presence in local businesses, cars driving by and in the homes of family and friends. The city of Cali is known as “la capital mundial de la salsa,” (the world capital of salsa). The “Son Cubano” (The Cuban Sound) crossed the Caribbean in the mid 20th cent along with the NYC Harlem dancehall scene and became influential where I am from. My entire childhood revolved around the healing and expressive nature of these rhythmic sounds. A few of my favorite songs are Amor y Control by Rubén Blades and Busca Por Dentro by Grupo Niche. In the studio, my body guides my making as I sing to and dance with material. Both Cali and Queens interlace and are woven into the way I place color, compose form and unravel movement into my work. I recollect fragments of home and family while meditating on the poetics of memory and migration. I think about the shifting nature of pattern and color as it breathes and reflects my internalization of moving  through different spaces- things are impermanent, they shift and move. What is familiar stays, but also changes with added layers of the newness of a place that too becomes home. 

Your work pulls from traditions of both abstraction and representation across various media. Are there specific artists or movements that have been influential?

Artists such as Judith Scott, Eva Hesse, and Cecilia Vicuña are a few of the many artists that have been influential to my practice. I would say that the The New York Painting scene from 1967-1975 that Katy Siegel highlighted in the book High Times, Hard Times deeply informed my utilization of various media and pushed me to rethink the “idea” of painting and the space it offers for the spirit. In thinking about the spirit, I’ve also ventured to South American textile art traditions. Molas in Colombia are handmade textiles that form part of the traditional clothing of the Tule/Kuna people of the Northern region. Kuna means “la superficie de la tierra'' the surface of the earth, and Tule means “la persona que habita la tierra,” the person who inhabits the earth. The Kuna tradition and my curiosity to learn more about different textile traditions are what ground and continue to inform my practice.

It looks like you remained highly productive throughout the pandemic, creating an abundance of small-scale, experimental works last year. During quarantine, were you making work at home? What sort of impact did this time have on your practice? 

During quarantine I was working from home and spent most of my time alone making art. I divided the basement floor I was staying in and made the smallest part of it my room, while the larger part became the “studio.” While questioning my health, the health of others- friends, family, acquaintances; the processing of all of this pushed me to listen more closely to the internal physical way of understanding things. My hands began to pick up thread and I let myself imagine its essence upside down, inside out and began to create unordinary outcomes with the unraveling of material, veiling of objects, collaging of textures and sewing of imagery. Before I knew it, I ran out of wall space and felt the urge to learn to weave. During this experience, I felt that I needed to carve out the time and space to continue to develop my work.

One piece from 2020, Lagunas Altas, was made in direct response to trekking through Chile’s Patagonia National Park. What role has embarking on long hikes such as this and documenting nature had in your process?

I think it all started from childhood. As a child, I spent most of my time in the river. Rio Pance en Cali, The Pance River is where I grew up listening to water, looking at rocks, playing with dirt and overtime these moments became sacred Sundays for me. Looking into and feeling nature is the place where my process begins. To me this process feels reflective and situates my thinking towards the interconnections of all people, places and things. I’m interested in listening to the way nature speaks through its subtle sounds of creation and how it sheds light and darkness to concepts of time, impermanence, and cycles of change. I purposely make it a part of my practice to spend time in the remote wilderness or in a nearby local community park. However, trekking in the wilderness was influenced by a residency called Signal Fire in Oregon, which I was a part of in 2017. Residents backpack parts of our remaining wildlands to learn and discuss ways to shift the dominant views in the American West. Post this fruitful experience, I acquired a teaching grant in 2019 to learn from a group of environmental educators that foster conversation and reflection around complex questions — of consumption, conservation, climate change, technology, and the future of environmentalism in Chile. My intention was to break down my learnings to nurture more of these conversations in the kindergarten classroom that I was part of during that time. Unfortunately, COVID took place right after. Looking back, this 64 mile walk led me to take photographs of the textures that spoke to me. Metaphorically, I see these textures as a form of text, texts that I feel in the presence of South American textile imagery and pattern.

You recently relocated to New Haven for grad school. What led you to Yale? Can you tell us about your current studio?

Sure, I applied to Yale with the work I made during quarantine. Aside from wanting to carve out time and space for my practice; I felt the urge to relocate my roots and merge them with others with the intention to be part of a community, learn from, grow with, and invite room for exchange and collaboration. Currently, the studio is a new home for my loom and I have been experimenting with large-scale weaving, introducing monoprinting into my collaging and progressively making sculptural work.

Can you talk about the development of your practice over the past year and how you’ve incorporated weaving? What are you working on right now?

There is actually a story for this question…

During my time in Coyhaique, Chile I was influenced and touched deeply by two tejedoras (weavers) that I befriended. While learning about their story and craft, I shared with them that I was a painter and that I felt a strong impulse to want to learn to weave. They gifted me with a book called, “Telar Patagonia: Una guia para principiantes/The Patagonian Loom, A beginner’s guide,” which just so happened their family was featured in. The family Aburto Jara de Villa Mañihuales held a strong tradition to textile making and the book profoundly highlighted the connection artisan’s have with the land, its history, home and their families as they tell their stories. In the book, they wrote a note, “Para una futura tejedora de sueños y historias/ For a future weaver of dreams and stories.” I think of this note as the seed that has planted the weaving bug in me in the studio. Since then, I decided to learn to weave on a loom and over the past year, I’ve focused on learning the process through an open and free spirited approach. I weave with natural material, found objects that can fold, repurposed clothes, yarn, mix it with new , and give myself room to disrupt the pattern by letting my feet dance with the pedals. Weaving for me feels like writing the unresolved, it makes me feel different layers of time, and teaches me to trust the process which in turn feels regenerative. I began to incorporate weaving into my collages and most recently I’ve been thinking about the “weight” of a weaving and how that poetically translates to the physical presence and/or absence of the body. I plan to give myself room to experiment with installation and implement weaving into sculptural work.

When looking at your work, the layering of collage, fibers, and mark-making creates a striking physicality and sense of movement. I’m curious if the actual process of making art in the studio involves a high level of physical movement or activity for you? 

When I listen to music in the studio, I can’t help but to dance and my body’s movement informs how I make my work.When I collage and paint, I primarily work on the floor and my body stretches and twists across different surfaces. I work on different pieces at the same time, move from a moment to the next and this may look like holding objects close to me to wrap them with thread, to then hearing the crunch of natural material as I beat the beater of my loom, or ripping fabric to collage with, paint onto, cover objects with, and assemble them to make strange entanglements. All of this happens at different paces. Some of these moments push my body to continue moving, while other moments ask for stillness and a slowing of things down. 

You seem to embrace (rather than attempt to control or conceal) the natural tendencies of your chosen materials. There’s a feeling of improvisation. Can you share some insight into this intuitive approach to transforming materials? What sorts of things are you usually responding to while working?

I feel that our everyday lives with all of our work responsibilities and societal or personal pressures can push us to get so deep into our heads that we begin to lose touch with our knowledgeable body. There is all this information living within us, present with us and I work towards honoring that when I walk into the studio. At times I take wrong turns and situations don’t work out, but to me that breathes more life into the work because I work through things and choose not to become fixated on the outcome. I am interested in being in conversation with the work as opposed to telling it what to do. This process requires a building of trust and acceptance to material (with its limitations) and I aspire to embrace that because that is how transformation can take place. 

Throughout your work, wrinkles and rough edges are visible, while loose threads hang and move freely. Your weavings are often cut up and the textiles are allowed to slightly unravel. Can you talk about these choices and how they relate to the element of chance and impermanence? 

My urge to make weavings ignited from my relationship with nature. When I talk about nature, I don’t just mean the remote wilderness, but how it's present in our everyday lives, homes, streets, and communities. Even in the remote wilderness, nature is not pristine and perfect, wind moves soil, as it does trash, there is drought, heavy rain, pollution around us, and moments of chaos. I make weavings and use them in ways that think about this reality and invite the messiness, grittiness, and “in-betweenness” of things, while still leaving room for the imagination. For me, chance and impermanence are reflections of everyday life and it has taken me to also think about beauty with grossness, and all those things that I feel as human, and so, I lovingly caress tears, smudges, rips and all the nuance that comes with it.

You mentioned that you’ve been writing poetry in Spanish and English, as well as letters to your works. What is the relationship between this text and your visual work?

I write letters that take the shape of a conversation. I mostly write poetry in Spanish and the kind of writing I do feels impulsive, short, fluid, and words are written at different times, in different settings before they weave a narrative. As I think through writing my thoughts, the title of my works come about. 

Are there writers, or written works, that particularly resonate with you?

Oh Yes, to name a few I would say, Poems in the book,“todo es mío en el sentido que nada me pertenece,” by Gonzalo Arango, “A Practice in the Wild” by Gary Snyder and “Agua Viva” by Clarice Lispector are voices that have struck many chords. I also pay close attention to the romance and wisdom that I feel in the lyrics of boleros and other forms of folkloric oral traditions.

Can you talk a bit about your experience as an educator and fostering engagement in the arts through community programs?  

Sure, my experience as an educator began in public school settings. As I became more curious about museums and contemporary art education; I stepped outside the classroom setting and became a museum educator and teaching artist at El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum, MoMA, BRIC and with Arts & Minds. In these spaces I met inspiring artists, activists, educators, expressive arts therapists, and writers. They brought into my life memorable ways of building community and awareness through art inquiry, art making, conversation, reflection, and advocacy. Collaborating with others and experiencing the diverse dynamics of in school residencies, gallery teaching, hospital settings, senior centers and partaking in community events in different neighborhoods has become part of the foundation of why I make art. For me art is an educational tool, a space that invites conversation, reflection and it is from people- students, families, participants,viewers, visitors, patients- (whichever term appropriate) that continues to deeply inspire me and I carry with me the teachings of their stories.

I know in 2022 you’ll be heading to a residency at Arquetopia in Peru. What do you plan to work on while you’re there?

During my time here I would practice different Andean textile techniques, learn how to use the traditional back-strap loom, and most importantly engage with local weavers and educators about the iconography, history, and traditional textile production system of Peruvian culture. I am most interested in learning how these textile traditions have shifted overtime to survive and how they continue to exist in the present day.

What’s next for you? Are there other upcoming projects, exhibitions, or news you’d like to share?

As of now, I will be continuing my second semester at Yale and looking forward to my upcoming residency!

To find out more about Daniela Gomez Paz check her out on Instagram or on their website.