Dalila Paola Mendez- Week 3

Dalila Paola Mendez

Dalila Paola Mendez is an Indigenous, Guatemalan/Salvadorian, and Queer artist born in Los Angeles. She works in printmaking, photography, and film. She  grew up in a multi-ethnic household and a multi-racial community in Echo park. Her ethnic background and her community in which she grew up in, inspires her artwork and provides a source for her to celebrate her Indigenous and African ancestry. Her artwork often features and tells stories of women, Queer identities, resilience, the environment, and the importance of elders and their knowledge. Her artwork also is known for its vibrancy as well as its depictions and references of ancient sacred indigenous knowledge and combining the contemporary with the ancient to explore the past as a way to navigate the issues we face in the contemporary world. Her knowledge and a lot of her inspiration for her work comes from her grandmother, who instilled in her, the ways of the past. Her identity as a darker skinned woman also is the reason that she often celebrates the dark Goddess woman and also often depicts contemporary women of darker skin complexions.

Corazon del Agua        22” x 30”, Serigraph 2018

            Mendez received her Bachelor’s of Arts in International Relations from the University of Southern California. She became a teacher and taught at LAUSD for three years, until in 2001, she became a substitute teacher and started to spend her time working in film, as a production designer. Mendez declares that it was the year 2015, in which she officially made art her full time job.  In 2015, she was also 1 of 5 artists selected to create a print in Havana, Cuba as part of a Printmaker’s Exchange between American and Cuban artists. While in Cuba, Mendez was inspired by the artists there, who often lacked supplies and relied on their innovation to create art, to push her artwork forward and to make a living off of it. In 2018, Mendez was awarded an Artist in Residence Grant through the City of LA, Dept. of Cultural Affairs.

"Queerios"     22" x 30", Serigraph, 2015

Plantain Leaves      35mm film, Antigua, Guatemala 

References:

-https://www.lacommons.org/post/artist-spotlight-dalila-paola-mendez
-https://esmoa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/DALILA-PAOLA-MENDEZ-biography-MATRIARCHS-1.pdf

-https://www.selfhelpgraphics.com/2018-prints/2018/6/14/dalila-paola-mendez-corazon-del-agua