Vit à : Paris , France
Born in Guatemala ciudad, Guatemala
Lives and works in Paris. Curator, art critic and poet
Member of AICA-France and C-E-A / Association française des commissaires d’exposition
Ana Mendoza Aldana has been thinking, organizing and producing intellectual and eminently sensitive exhibitions for over twelve years.
Since 2013, her projects (at the Palais de Tokyo, at the CRAC Alsace in Altkirch, the Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry — le Crédac, the Bains douches in Alençon, the Air de Paris and Marcelle Alix galleries in Paris…) often take literature as their starting point, and seek to shed a different light on the most diverse contemporary artistic practices and the urgencies of the present.
She places particular emphasis on feminist and queer issues and practices, as well as on painting.
From 2024 onwards, she developed a new form of art criticism, borrowing its typographic games and musical and narrative forms from poetry. This experimental form allows for a free association of images, rhythms, sounds and personal experiences shared in connection with the works presented.
After ten years’ experience working as a director for galleries that have left their mark on the French and international art scene (Triple V, Air de Paris), she worked for over three years as head of curatorial research at the Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry — le Crédac, where she conceived and organized “La Fugitive”, an exhibition on lesbian and queer identity inspired by the character Albertine (“À la recherche du temps perdu”, Marcel Proust).
In 2024, she was selected to take part in the Visitor Programme of Phileas – the Austrian Office for Contemporary Art in collaboration with Trampoline in Vienna and Salzburg.
She is regularly invited to present or publish her work as a curator, art critic and researcher, including at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, the Bibliothèque Kandinsky – Centre de recherche du Musée national d’art moderne, the École du Louvre, the M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, and the Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry – le Crédac, among others.
“L’amitié, ce tremble”, at the CRAC Alsace in Altkirch and at the Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry — le Crédac
Exhibition on affective bonds, and how they affect the way we think about artistic projects and our lifestyles, with Boris Achour (with Émilie Renard), Noémie Bablet, Caroline Bachmann, Anna Byskov (with Bertil Byskov, Margaret Byskov, Camila Farina and Sophie Lamm), Thomas Cap de Ville, Caretto & Spagna, Lola Gonzàlez, Donna Gottschalk, Tom Hallet, Eric Hattan (with Silvia Bächli, Rut Himmelsbach, Guido Nussbaum, Hannah Villiger and Anna Winteler), Dorothy Iannone and Sarah Pucci, Youri Johnson, Edit Oderbolz, Hatice Pinarbaşi (with Aram Abbas, Zahna Siham Benamor, Hugo Ferretto and Elif Pinarbaşi), Marthe Ramm Fortun, Marnie Slater (with Robin Brettar, Matilda Cobanli, Judith Geerts, Jessica Gysel, Katja Mater and Clare Noonan) and Sarah Tritz. Co-curated with Claire Le Restif, Sébastien Martins, Richard Neyroud and Elfi Turpin.
“La Fugitive”, Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry – le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine
Based on the character Albertine in Marcel Proust’s “À la recherche du temps perdu”, an exhibition as a fictional portrait exploring lesbian and queer identity, with Chantal Akerman, Mélissa Boucher, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Cécile Bouffard, Anne Bourse, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Jean de Sagazan, Marcel Devil- lers, Tirdad Hashemi and Soufia Erfanian, G. B. Jones, Ana Jotta, Marie Laurencin, Autumn Ramsey, Lena Vandrey, and Zoe Williams.
“El oro de los tigres”, Air de Paris, Romainville
An exhibition in homage to the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, to his partial blindness (which allows him to see only yellow) and to the color yellow, in resonance with the ecological and social crises that are shaking the world at the end of 2019, with Evgeny Antufiev, Lucy Bull, Horia Damian, Louise Giovanelli, Rodrigo Hernández, Lin May Saeed, and Jill Mulleady.
“La réalité viscérale”, Les Bains douches, Alençon
An exhibition constructed as a story of friendship, poetry and fiction, based on “Los detectives salvajes” by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, with Mélissa Boucher, Corentin Canesson, Mirak Jamal, Sarah Pucci, Camila Oliveira Fairclough, Sarah Pucci, and a performance by author Josselin Ménage.
“Monstres et Madones”, Triple V, Paris
An exhibition on the sublime based on the photographic work of William Mortensen (1897 – 1965), mixing terror and eroticism, with Mélissa Boucher, Victor Man, Blair Thurman, and Céline Vaché-Olivieri
“The Floating Admiral”, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013, project selected for the “Nouvelle vagues” season
With Cartel de Kunst (of which I was a member) as a guest, an exhibition based on the collective writing of the eponymous detective novel (by Agatha Christie, among others), on the question of the death of painting, using the game of exquisite corpse. Each curator contributed to a chapter with an artist, to bring a possible answer to resolving the idea of the death of painting.
With Francis Alÿs, Isabelle Cornaro, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Nicolas Floc’h, Mario García Torres, Germain Hamel, Nathan Hylden, Zhanna Kadyrova, Kitty Kraus, Hugo Pernet