Carolina Malagamba

Carolina Malagamba is a Mexican-German artist living and working in New York City since 2016. Her practice explores the space between paper and textile art through embroidery on paper, while also engaging with drawing, collage, book art, and installation.

Art is like a language that everyone can understand and interpret, but not everyone knows how to talk in it. Being able to speak that language, to do art, to feel art is a privilege. For me, a girl that grew up stuck between two cultures, it is the language in which I am the most honest about what I think and feel. It is a way to talk about yourself without even talking. It is comparable to situations when people smile with their eyes or thank you with a gesture instead of a word. The language of art has this certain secrecy that the spectator can overcome if he is just a tiny bit curious about the person that is actually speaking. And it also has this mystery at the moment in which he, the spectator, does not know anything or does not care about the artist and he just feels the art and becomes part of it. Therefore art is this language for me in which I tell stories. Secret stories, sad stories, stories of love, stories of anger and courage. My stories. I tell them for me, but I also tell them for anyone who wants to listen, for anyone who wants to see. I grew up in a very creative environment given to the fact that my father is an artist too. Very early I learned not to compare myself and my work to the work of others. I am very independent and maybe even a bit ignorant in that aspect. I do not follow assiduously the art of those specific artists that do embroidery or of those specific artists that talk about the same things I do. I just think that it is wrong trying to be better or more interesting than someone else, I prefer investing energy in being the best version of myself. I started to embroider on paper before I started my BA, even before I finished High School. My relationship to embroidery is a very folkloric one because I knew it from the traditional Mexican clothing my mother so proudly wears. When I started working with embroidery I had not researched about textile art or anything related to it but it seemed logical for me to take it to paper instead of applying it to another textile. I took a trade, that in Mexico is taken for granted and badly paid and tried to present it in a way people would acknowledge and admire it.