Paulina Ascencio Fuentes is a researcher and curator from Mexico. She has a background in Philosophy and Social Sciences, and holds a MA in Curatorial Studies from CCS, Bard College, New York. She is currently the Hevey-Filling Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Her research outlines transdisciplinary modes of knowledge production and transmission, analyzes cultural exchanges between Mexico and the United States, and approaches museums, archives, and collections as contact zones.
MA Thesis
Uxmal-on-Hudson. Migrant Mutants and Fake Ruins
Exhibition: An adaptation of a historic-site museum
Spring 2021
Research
Paricutín: An Archive like Lapilli. A Decolonial Outline of the
Volcanic Sublime Across Smithsonian Institution Collections
Hevey-Filling Fellow in Anthropology
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Fall 2021
Curatorial
Cannupa Hanska Luger – Future Ancestral Technologies
EMPAC - Experimental Media and Performance Arts Center, NY
Fall 2021
Exhibition
Notes on Anarchaelogy
Ramapo Curatorial Prize, CCS Bard
Fall 2022