After concluding her studies of fine arts at the Universidad Finis Terrae in Providencia, Chile, Paula Ábalos Santibáñez studied media art in the “Expanded Cinema” class at the University of Graphics and Book Arts in Leipzig from 2016. She has been present in both solo and group exhibitions in Chile and abroad and has taken part in various video art festivals. In 2015, she won the first place in the video art category at the Santiago Municipal Awards.
Her autobiographically influenced works focus on video art, video installation, experimental cinema, animation, performance, photography and the creation of textbooks. She deals with everyday work problems and asks how they affect the body and mind. Another central topic in her work are non-places and the way they influence the behavior of those who must inhabit these spaces. Furthermore, her work reflects the tension between home and non-home. Paula Ábalos Santibáñez lives and works in Leipzig.
Filmography (selection)
Visitantes (2021)
The invisible cloth (2021)
Diarios de trabajos (2020)
Ausbeutung oder wie man die Oberflaeche durchbricht (2020)
NOCTÁMBULOS INVISIBLES (2019)
WINDOW (2019)
Stipendienprojekt: Hipnagogía (Produktion)
The animated short film HIPNAGOGÍA is about working at night in parcel distribution centers (such as Amazon and DHL) emphasizing the psychological and social effects of working at night. Through a protagonist we see how the state between wakefulness and sleep is transferred to the work space, since due to exhaustion and living outside the circadian rhythm, the perception of some people can be altered and these places can be experienced as dreamlike spaces on which the inner world is projected. HIPNAGOGÍA is mainly about loneliness: about spaces and works of loneliness created by the current economic system and social structures. Its title refers to hallucinations that can be had in the state between awake and asleep.
During the residency she plans to finish the final drawings of the storyboard and start animating. She plans to create a trailer during the residency and animate key scenes.
