Paola
Gracida
DETAILS
Mexican, b. 1979
“I am interested in adaptability—how we exist, shift, and endure through continual change.”
– Paola Gracida
Paola Gracida creates ceramic sculptures that explore adaptability, transformation, and the fragile balance of existence. Through forms that test the limits of clay, she considers gravity, resilience, and the tension between permanence and change, shaping works that reflect the shifting conditions of identity and belonging.
Biography
Paola Gracida is a Mexican American artist born in Mexico City in 1979. Her ceramic practice examines adaptability, transformation, and the delicate balance of existence, using sculptural forms to explore gravity, resilience, and the poetic tension between permanence and change. Influenced by her experiences living abroad, her work reflects an ongoing dialogue around identity, belonging, and the ways people adjust within changing cultural landscapes.
Gracida earned a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and later completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Designhögskolan at Umeå University in Sweden. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the South Haven Center for the Arts and The Other Art Fair in Chicago and Dallas, and she has served as a guest instructor at the Krasl Art Center in Michigan. She continues to live and work in Mexico, where she develops a practice grounded in material exploration and conceptual reflection.
“My ceramic work examines adaptability and transformation—how we live within change, and how the body and the spirit respond to shifting conditions. I am drawn to the tension between permanence and impermanence, and to the quiet resilience that emerges through that balance.”
– Paola Gracida