From the interior design artistry of Laura Kirar to the vibrant and enthralling works of Santiago Cohen, we unpack our favourite Mexican artists...
With our founder Anna Paola’s mixed cultural upbringing and passion for arts and culture at the heart of PAOLITA, today we are celebrating Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the dead) by shining a light on some of our favourite Mexican artists and designers.
From the interior design artistry of Laura Kirar to the vibrant and enthralling works of Santiago Cohen, we unpack our favourite artists from this beautiful and vibrant nation.
Santiago Cohen is a Mexican/American artist who also happens to be the maternal uncle of our Founder Anna Paola. Having worked historically as a designer illustrator and animator, he created the first Comedy Central logo, designed 24 episodes of Troubles the Cat and has illustrated more than 20 children’s books. Now with a thriving fine art career, Cohen’s shows can be found in galleries across New York, New Jersey and Mexico. In 2014 he had a solo show at the Hunterdon Art museum with his Exvida project installation which included over 1150 oil paintings in the Ex voto style.
Since 2014, he has been the artistic director of the Jersey City Riverview Association’s Day of the Death Parade, featuring enormous puppets painted by the artist in his studio. For the last five years, he has studied print at the Art Student’s League in New York, and in 2018, he had his most recent solo show at the Barret At Center in Poughkeepsie, New York. Natalie Bell of the New Museum curated the National Juried Competition.
Melina Muzquiz was born in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1972. She currently divides her time between Los Angeles and Guadalajara, Mexico.
Performance is an essential aspect of many of Muzquiz’s artistic projects, one of them was the group Los Super Elegantes, which she founded with Martiniano López Crozet in the nineties; this became a combination of installation, video art, and music, which circulated in both institutional spaces such as museums all over the world, at venues including the Whitney Biennale, Frieze Art Fair, BALTIC Centre from Contemporary Art, Miami Basel and the Musee d’Art Modern, Paris, they became a highly sought-after art world fixture.
Perhaps best known for her work with ceramics, her sculptures can be interpreted as an exercise of subjective scrutiny; the disorganized accumulation of elements seeks to imitate the uneven and contradictory way in which the human mind works.. Today, Muzquiz is exploring a new medium—painting—at her studio in L.A. (She still creates her sculptures across the border in Mexico.) “The different stages of drying the oil paint can conduct a movement in the piece,” she says. “It is still all very mysterious to me and exciting to figure out.”
Laura Kirar is the founder & creative director of Laura Kirar Design (LKD). She is an internationally renowned interior & product designer as well as a sculptor, a design industry connector and a creative experience producer. It is her mission to foster artistic exploration, to inspire others by inventing platforms for spatial collaboration that merge the work of LKD with new talents, artisanal craft, and authentic design.
The studio of Laura Kirar creates memorable interiors and collectable designs with a timeless sensibility reflecting their respect for both history and innovation. Laura Kirar’s interior projects range from high-end residences to award-winning commercial interiors, restaurants, showrooms, and hotels including her own widely published Mesón Hidalgo – Guesthouse Boutique, a hotel & experiential retail location in San Miguel de Allende.
Driven by her desire to positively affect the economic future of indigenous craft, Kirar began a period of independent study, travelling to Mexico to learn about traditional materials & techniques. During this period of inspiring research and collaboration with celebrated Mexican artisans, Kirar produced beautiful examples of what she calls “the marriage of modern design with traditional technique.”
Kirar holds a degree in sculpture & interior architecture from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her passion for artistic exploration in numerous mediums has continued to infuse her work with originality and thoughtful attention to detail. Her extensive world travels and studio work in Mexico are powerful influences on each project Kirar undertakes. Laura Kirar has made an indelible mark on the design industry as a creator, patron, facilitator, collector, and connector.
Ana Segovia studied fine arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she specialized in drawing and painting. Segovia explores masculinity and its stereotypes as the result of socio-cultural constructions.
Her work shows influences from painters such as David Hockney, Dana Schutz and Francis Bacon, while also making references to literature and cinema.
Individually, Ana Segovia has exhibited in Fuego, Mexico City; Karen Huber Gallery, Mexico City, and LTD, Los Angeles; in addition, she has participated in various collective shows in the United States, mainly in Chicago, such as Kruger Gallery, Crybaby Gallery, Sullivan Gallery and Pullman Art Festival.
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