Artist introduction: Paula Segarra
Paula Segarra is a Spanish artists and part of the Spanish NAT, hosted by Espronceda. She was born in Valencia, Spain, and graduated in Fine Arts from the Faculty of San Carlos, Valencia.
https://www.paulasegarra.com
IG: @paulasegarra.art
Paula works with figurative painting and drawing in organic forms. Create images with a single main character who inhabits a theatrical space either because it has been recontextualized in a symbolic landscape or by creating a set with the physical framework of the work.
These protagonists are mainly animals since their work focuses on how sociocultural constructs condition human behavior. They metaphorically represent our primal animality. As visual fables, the viewer can find themselves reflected in Paula’s collection of bestiaries. There is in her painting a combination of latent tenderness and aggressiveness to address such challenging themes as sexuality, morality, death or freedom. Her images constitute an invitation to reconnect with instinct and detect any culturally imposed limitations.
Latest project: “When pigs fly”
The project is based on the metaphor of the flying pig: The pig, traditionally associated with the earthly and everyday, is transformed into a symbolic figure that defies the laws of gravity and reality. Flying, in this context, represents freedom, the ability to transcend what is established and the search for beauty.
There is a clear criticism of the system in the project: The expression “when pigs fly” is used to ridicule any utopian or revolutionary idea. However, the artist recovers it and reinvents it, turning it into an invitation to live outside of what is established and to fight for a better world.
The project invites us to dream, question and transform ourselves from a reflection on existential themes such as life, death, freedom and the meaning of existence. It is an incitement to reflect on one’s own beliefs and self-imposed limits.
The approach reaffirms the power of art as a universal language that has the ability to connect people on an emotional level and provoke changes in the way we live our lives and see the world. Art, in this case, becomes a tool to question the status quo and to imagine new ways of living. The creation of beauty, despite often painful reality, is presented as an act of resistance and hope.
About the project
“For a long time I lived across from a pig slaughterhouse. The image of the trucks entering through those doors, repeated over and over again over the years, has been with me ever since. From that disturbing image of childhood, When Pigs Fly is now built, a project whose title perhaps begins by introducing the viewer to the playful image of the winged pig rotating on its own axis at the top of any room but which ultimately plays with the metaphor of an impossible, something that will hardly happen: pigs flying. In fact ‘when pigs fly’ is that popular expression that refers precisely to the impossible, annihilating any desire for a utopian enterprise that frees us from the tedium of routine or a tragic end.
For those of us who cannot get rid of the utopian thought that nothing is impossible and who intend to live outside the paradigm of producing and reproducing; The image of a flying pig is a metaphor for freedom, an invitation to fly – live – for the pleasure of creating beauty in this world.”
Other work
Exhibition at the Estampa contemporary art fair in October 2024 with the Anto arte gallery.
Finalist at the “El porc del demá” illustration contest; and her works will be published in their magazine.