Espinoza

Paula Castillo works with man-made industrial materials to recombine the personal and the familiar in unusual ways. Creating minimal forms and compositions, Castillo draws attention to the strangeness of scrap metal and building materials that she collects, welding pieces together to transform their appearance and purpose. This piece is from a body of work called Susto, which draws from an Indo-Hispanic folk belief common across New Mexico and the greater Southwest. Susto, maning a sudden fright or shock, can unsettle the spirit, requiring ritual tending or repair. For Castillo each sculpture from this series holds a charge– ritualistic, ecological, maybe even medicinal– that can be used for repair.