Paola Mendoza: 2026 Artist in Residence

Launched in 2023, JusticeAid’s Artist in Residence program deepens our commitment to the joyful connection between justice and art. Each year, we invite a talented artist to collaborate with us, creating original work that reflects JusticeAid’s mission, our annual justice pillar, and the goals of our grantee partner. Past Artists in Residence are Paine the Poet and Ìsa Blues. We are thrilled to introduce our 2026 Artist in Residence Paola Mendoza, who will appear at our Spring benefit concert, Rhythm Nation, and other occasions throughout the year.

Meet Paola

Paola Mendoza is a Colombian-born multi-media artist, filmmaker, author, and cultural organizer whose storytelling drives her audiences toward a relentless demand for change. Paola uses art to disrupt and disarm, to change our thinking, and to advance movements for immigrants, women, and reproductive justice. Her artistry defies classification in any one genre—spanning written, visual, film and musical forms.Grounded in an immigrant perspective, her work exposes the violence embedded in borders and systems of power.

Watch the Instagram video.

A Cry for Freedom

Last year, on the steps of the Statue of Liberty, Paola organized 50 people for A Cry for Freedom, a visual protest against the Trump administration’s violation of due process for 238 men sent to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) mega-prison in El Salvador. The title draws from a group of asylum-seeking women who, after months in detention under abhorrent conditions, organized their own llanto de libertad—a cry for freedom.

Calling out the names of the 238 men one by one, followed by a collective wail, Paola created her own cry for freedom—transforming grief into protest and protest into art, and reclaiming public space as a site of memory, denunciation, and a refusal to forget.

Photos by Kisha Bari.
Immigrants Are Essential

This public art installation, created in 2021 in SoHo, honors the lives of Fedelina, Mario, Moisés, Yimel, Juan, Ofelia, and Guadalupe—seven undocumented New Yorkers whose stories reflect the experiences of countless others too often unseen. Through illustrated portraits drawn from family photographs, Paola centers their humanity, resilience, and the sacrifices they made to build better futures for their families.

The project—named for a campaign spearheaded by the National Immigration Law Center and Resilience Force—included a QR code linking to oral histories shared by loved ones. Together, the installation challenges viewers to see beyond labor and status, recognizing undocumented immigrants as integral members of our communities while underscoring the urgent need for more just and humane immigration policies.

Rosa’s Miracle

In 2018, Rosa set out with her four children, joining more than 7,000 people walking from Honduras to the U.S. southern border. They crossed deserts, mountains, and rivers as the world watched. Rosa’s Miracle retells her story through striking images rooted in dignity and celebration.

Writing

Paola’s writings include two young adult books and essays published by Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times, among others…

Sanctuary
It’s 2032, and in this near-future America, all citizens are chipped and everyone is tracked–from buses to grocery stores. It’s almost impossible to survive as an undocumented immigrant, but that’s exactly what sixteen-year-old Vali is doing. She and her family have carved out a stable, happy life in small-town Vermont, but when Vali’s mother’s counterfeit chip starts malfunctioning and the Deportation Forces raid their town, they are forced to flee.

SOLIS
From the authors of Sanctuary comes a haunting near-future companion tale about undocumented immigrants subjected to deadly experiments in a government labor camp and the four courageous rebels who set into place a daring plan to liberate them.

Together We Rise
On January 21, 2017, the day after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, more than three million marchers of all ages and walks of life took to the streets to participate in the Women’s March, the largest protest in modern American history. Published for the one-year anniversary of the event, Together We Rise chronicles this remarkable uprising as told by the organizers’ personal stories and reflections on their collective journey. They provide an inside look at how the idea for the event originated, how it was organized, how it became a global movement that surpassed their wildest expectations, and how they are sustaining and building on the widespread outrage, passion, and determination that sparked it. A New York Times bestseller. . 

The Women’s March

As a co-founder and artistic director of the Women’s March, Paola was instrumental in mobilizing over 5 million people to the streets on January 21, 2017. With over 653 marches in the United States alone, the Women’s March was the largest single day protest in the history of the U.S.

Photos by Kisha Bari.
The Resistance Revival Chorus

Paola is a co-founder of The Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of more than 60 womxn who join together to breathe joy and song into the resistance.

Founded in the wake of the 2017 Women’s March, the chorus strives to center women in music and address how historically marginalized women have been in the music industry. The critically acclaimed groupd is active at protests, rallies, and vigils, and also holds regular shows where political organizers and special guests fortify the group’s size and power. They have performed at several JusticeAid public forums.

Filmmaking

Paola’s films tackle the complex issues of poverty and immigration and their impact on women and children in the United States. She is currently directing a feature-length documentary about domestic workers.

Romina is an animated short film that tells the true story of a 14-year-old girl facing an unplanned pregnancy in a state where abortion is banned. Despite the legal barriers, a community rallies around her, ensuring she can access the abortion she desires.

Sophie Cruz became an Internet sensation in 2015 when Pope Francis visited our nation’s capital. Five years old at the time, she dodged the Pope’s security to deliver a letter imploring him to help undocumented immigrants. Free Like the Birds is the story of Sophie as she fights an unjust immigration system to protect her undocumented parents.

A mother (Jamie-Lynn Sigler, The Sopranos) and her three-year-old daughter (Heaven King, The Ellen Show) giggle and dance to their favorite song on the radio. A chance encounter with a police officer changes the course of their lives forever. A Broken Tail Light shatters the life of a mother and her child.

Newly arrived in New York City and deserted by her husband, Mariana must find a way for herself and her two children to survive their first summer in the United States.

I Am a Child: Civil Disobedience

In June 2018, Paola organized a group of children on Capitol Hill to demand an end to child separation from their families on the southern U.S. border. As creative director, she drew inspiration from the 1968 “I Am a Man” campaign, including Ernest Withers’ photograph of striking sanitation workers in Memphis.

Photos by Kate Sullivan/CNN, Win McNamee/Getty Images, and Kisha Bari.
Family Separation Installation

In May 2019, the one-year anniversary of Trump’s Zero Tolerance Policy, Paola placed a life-size installation of a caged child on the Capitol lawn in Washington, DC. The installation was a searing reminder to our nation’s leaders that hundreds of children still remained forcibly separated from their parents.