The March/April edition of Justice+Art features the work of our 2026 Artist in Residence: Paola Mendoza. Mendoza is a prolific creator who immigrated from Colombia when she was three years old. She has dedicated her energy to making art and organizing movements to uplift the stories and cultural impact of humans from across the world. Mendoza embraces the idea that “art is a hammer with which to shape reality,” and her fine art, films, books and performance pieces all uplift her passion for justice and the beauty that cannot be contained by borders. We hope you enjoy these selections which represent a small sample of Mendoza’s extensive body of work.
Writing
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
This haunting near-future companion tale to Sanctuary tells the story of 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 people took to the streets for the Women’s March—the largest single-day protest in modern American history. Published for the march’s one-year anniversary, Together We Rise chronicles this extraordinary uprising through the voices of its organizers, including co-founder Mendoza. Their reflections offer an inside look at how the idea began, grew into a global movement that surpassed their wildest expectations, and continues to channel the outrage and determination that sparked it.
Performance Art
Last year, on the steps of the Statue of Liberty, Mendoza organized 50 people for A Cry for Freedom, a visual protest against the the government’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, Mendoza 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 surrender.
Photos by Kisha Bari.
Public Art Installation
Immigrants Are Essential, 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, Mendoza centers their humanity, resilience, and the sacrifices they made to build better futures for their families. Read their stories.
“Art has always been our memory in the face of institutionalized gaslighting. Art becomes a vessel for truth telling. It resists silence. It insists we were here. We saw. We remember.”
Music
Mendoza 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.
Filmmaking
Mendoza’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.
