bio + statement

form follows fiction
[todo lo que invento es verdad]

daniela franco has a penchant for dilettante polyvalence. her projects are developed as long-term fictions in collaboration with writers and musicians. through coincidences and the slight alteration of daily life and using language as image and image as fiction, her research attempts different answers to the question: is it possible to create literature without writing?

she lives and works between Querétaro (MX) and Paris (FR). she is a Fulbright Scholar and has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fundación Jumex, and the Mexican Ministry of Culture among others. she obtained her Masters in Fine Arts at the San Francisco Art Institute and was selected as artist-in-residence for the post-graduate research program at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris.

in daniela franco’s work form (executed through archives, collections, topographies, anecdotes, found objects, and images) follows concept and fiction. in recent years, she has started a long series of drawings and graphic projects. if her projects are fiction and her videos concrete poetry, her drawings and collages (usually made on notebook pages) are essays: another way of writing without writing.

she teaches workshops in art theory and criticism; writes for magazines such as The Believer and Letras Libres; and has translated Anne Carson, Miranda July, Lorrie Moore and Kenneth Goldsmith into Spanish.

in the same way that for her an on-line archive, social media, or any other immaterial platform are as valuable as an exhibition space, all of her activities are part of her artistic endeavours. editing a translated text or a video, developing an exhibition project or an essay, assembling a collage or a critique class: all form part of daniela franco’s body of artistic work.

daniela franco lecturing at SOMA in Mexico City, May 2022. Photo by Ana Dufon.