Paulina Ascencio Fuentes (1988, Guadalajara, México) is an independent curator living and working between Guadalajara and New York. She is a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at New York University (NYU), where she also completed the Certificate in Culture and Media at the Tisch School of the Arts, with an emphasis on ethnographic film and documentary practices, and holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College.
Her practice brings together ethnography, curating, and critical museum studies through feminist and political ecology approaches with an emphasis on collaborative methodologies. Her research examines exhibitions, archives, and collections as contact zones and sites of epistemological dispute. She is currently developing Guardianxs del fuego y terror verde (Fire Keepers and Green Terror), a project that approaches fire as an ancestral technology and communal force in the Purépecha Highlands of Michoacán, México, exploring its political, symbolic, and affective dimensions in contexts of violence and territorial defense.
In addition to this, she has developed projects and collaborations with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (Washington, D.C.), the Museo de Arte Moderno and the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City), Museo Cabañas (Guadalajara), and the Hessel Museum of Art (New York), as well as with international initiatives such as the Equity for Indigenous Research and Innovation Coordinating Hub (ENRICH) and Local Contexts. She has participated in the programs of the Center for Curatorial Leadership and Independent Curators International, and is 1/4 of the curatorial collective Department of Love. Her research has been supported by the Smithsonian Institution, Mexico’s National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies (CONAHCYT), Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, New York University, and the Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo, among others. In 2021, she received the Ramapo Curatorial Prize.
