Paloma Contreras (b. 1991, Mexico City, Mexico) will use the Grant to produce Antígona, an immersive installation combining sculpture, video and sound, with the aim of exploring contemporary forms of mourning and disappearance in Latin America. Inspired by the figures of the ‘Latin American Antigones,’ women who search for and reclaim their dead, the work presents a theatre of the underworld where memory becomes resistance and ritual. Through murals, objects and a central video, Antígona recreates a funereal landscape permeated by rhythms and symbols of Mexican popular culture. The project is the first chapter in a series dedicated to representations of loss in contexts of social violence. The installation will be presented in 2026 at Gasworks, London, as part of the artist's residency between January and March.

Paloma Contreras focuses her practice on creating fantasy narratives to reimagine Latin American and Mexican history. Through writing, autofiction, video, drawing, and sculpture, she classifies and represents economic, political, historical, and bodily ‘spectres’ in settings that combine cinema and multimedia installation. Contreras has a Bachelor degree of Visual Arts from the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado ‘La Esmeralda’ and participated in the SOMA Educational Programme in Mexico. She was a member of the Biquini Wax collective. Her work is part of collections including: Museo Tamayo, Seattle Museum of Art, CIFO, Estrellita B. Brodsky Collection and KADIST. She has exhibited at numerous institutions and galleries, including: Kunstraum Kreuzberg (Berlin, 2025), Museo Anahuacalli (Mexico City, 2025), CARA NYC (New York, 2024), Museo del Chopo, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2019), Mendes Wood (São Paulo, 2023), kurimanzutto (Mexico City, 2021), Galería Agustina Ferreyra (Puerto Rico, 2022), and Pequod Co (Mexico City, 2020). She has participated in residencies such as ISCP (New York) and Lille3000 Eldorado (France).