Changarrito Residency: Paulina Rosiles

About the Artist

Paulina Rosiles (b. 2003) is a painter and multimedia artist from El Paso, Texas. She graduated with her BA from the University of Notre Dame in May 2025, double-majoring in Studio Art Honors and Economics, and minoring in Latino Studies. Her senior studio art thesis, Let’s Play Dress-Up, received the Father Anthony J. Lauck, C.S.C. Thesis Award.
Rosiles has interned at the El Paso Museum of Art, the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, where she explored various avenues of arts administration and the different ways cultural institutions serve their communities. She has exhibited in group exhibitions in South Bend, El Paso, and Rome. She debuted her first solo show at Latinx Underground Projects (LÜP), an El Paso-based gallery focused on emerging artists in the region, in August 2025. Most recently, she serves as the Digital Asset Manager at LÜP, building digital archives for the gallery, and continues to exhibit her work throughout the borderland.

Artist Statement

My work focuses on everyday scenarios from the Mexico-U.S. El Paso-Juárez border, centered on girlhood, matriarchal lineage, and familial tradition, in response to skewed depictions of the region as a crisis zone. The border is both a site of struggle and resistance, and of nurturing and flourishing, where mundane, mostly tranquil lives can thrive. I make sense of my home, a liminal space that is both the U.S. and Mexico, yet not fully either, and emphasize its gentleness.

My interdisciplinary practice combines painting, installation, craft, textiles, print, and performance. I challenge traditional categorizations, mirroring how the border resists belonging to any nation. Recently. I’ve increasingly incorporated crochet and sewing into my work, honoring the media the women in my family practice and the skills I’ve inherited from them.

I am influenced by domesticana, a concept coined by Amalia Mesa-Bains, describing Chicana art practices that elevate the feminine and domestic spheres. I depict elements from my everyday life that are often considered lowbrow—such as my paper dolls, fangirl crushes on Mexican actors, and amateur phone-photography portraits of my family—and position them as essential to understanding borderland life. Pink is another recurring motif in my work, not only because of its traditional association with girlhood, but its strong presence in my family’s photo archive, especially in childhood photos of me (you would think my reds got mixed with my whites with how much pink I wore).

I seek to expand the scope of border narratives through my art, showing that beyond herridas abiertas, la frontera is also a place capable of healing and care.