Dulce Gómez

Courtesy of the artist and Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

Dulce Gómez (b. 1967, Caracas, Venezuela) is a visual artist working with painting, assemblages, and collage. An important part of her work is inscribed in the tradition of a poetic investigation of trash in modern society. From very early on in her career, she has been working with the remainders of everyday objects extricated from their habitual contexts. Her painterly surfaces have ranged from the upholstery of old furniture to industrial tarp and plastic coverings, cardboard, and packing material, using them in unexpected ways that break away from their automatized use and produce allegories of time’s passage and the dynamics of light. With these materials, Gómez makes assemblages and installations that are powerful syntheses of calculation and chance. In general, her work has been determined by a dialectical relationship between the programmed and the random, the deliberate and the unexpected.

Her work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas (Venezuela); Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (Colombia); The Bronx Museum (New York); El Museo del Barrio (New York); Museo Amparo (Mexico); the National Gallery in San Juan (Puerto Rico); Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (Costa Rica); Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin); among others. Dulce Gómez’s works are part of public and private collections in Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and the United States.

A school without walls

LA ESCUELA___ began in 2021 with a reflection from its artistic director and co-founder, Miguel Braceli, about educational models for social practices and situated learning. This idea of bringing art and education closer to social realities by taking them out into public space became the building block of a project co-developed with the international foundation Siemens Stiftung. From this vision, LA ESCUELA___ was conceived as a “school without walls.”

Rather than operating from a fixed campus or following a predetermined curriculum, this artist-run platform works through a growing hemispheric network of artists, architects, educators, researchers, organizers, independent spaces, and communities. Its projects take shape in different contexts across the Americas, responding to local conditions while creating connections between places and practices.

Since 2022, LA ESCUELA___ has developed more than 45 projects in 13 countries, engaging more than 6,000 participants in online and on-site programs, and collaborating with over 350 artists and thinkers. Its programs include on-site experimental classrooms and online labs, residencies, public art, exhibitions, lectures, workshops, symposia, and research processes. An open-access Library with over 300 essays, interviews, documentation, and pedagogical resources expands this work into a growing alternative critical pensum of Latin American artistic and pedagogical practices.

At the heart of the platform is a commitment to reciprocal exchange: not exporting a model from one place to another, but creating conditions for different forms of knowledge to meet, circulate, and transform one another.