Biography
Ruth Somalo is a Spanish visual artist, curator, researcher and educator based in New York since 2008. She is interested in creating a non judgmental non anthropocentric space to discuss and embrace emotions, myth, fragility, death and ritual. Her latest work is concerned with taboos of the female body, illnesses, patriarchal structures & narrative medicine, human remains, tears, ritual healing, experiences of loss and the legacies of the Witch Hunts. Her feature and short films have been shown in theaters, festivals and museums internationally. She currently works as Senior Programmer at DOC NYC, DocumentaMadrid and The Architecture and Design Film Festival. Some of her independently curated programs include “The affection for small things” (Cineteca de Madrid), “Filming One’s own Ghosts”, “Holy Fluids and Absent Wounds” (Union Docs) and “Broken Senses” (Anthology Film Archives). Ruth also works as a mentor, seminar Instructor and as advisor of non fiction projects at Union Docs Center for Documentary Art. She is a PhD. candidate at Autonomous University of Madrid, and she is finishing her dissertation “MENDING OBJECTS: Mourning, reparation and the self in contemporary non fiction”. She is a long standing member of the research group Hist-Ex (Anthropology of Experience) at the Spanish National Research Council, currently working on a project that re-evaluates gesture as a form of community building and as a mark of political distinction.