Julieta Aranda was born in 1975 in Mexico City. She received a BFA in filmmaking from the School of Visual Arts (2001) and an MFA from Columbia University (2006), both in New York. Her explorations span installation, video, and print media, with a special interest in the creation and manipulation of artistic exchange and the subversion of traditional notions of commerce through art making.
Aranda’s body of work exists outside the boundaries of the object. Her installations and temporary projects, which often examine social interactions and the role that the circulation of objects plays in the cycles of production and consumption, are intensely site-specific. e-flux Video Rental (2004–07), one of her most widely known works, is a collaboration with artist and curator Anton Vidokle that created an archive of hundreds of artist videos available to the public free of charge; this traveling international project was enhanced by local artists and transformed by different trends and temperaments in each new city. Similarly, her collaborative project with Vidokle and artist Liz Linden, Pawnshop (2007), transformed the New York e-flux storefront into a pawnshop where artworks submitted by artists for cash were sold if not reclaimed in 30 days. This project comments on the complex relationship between artists and the commercial market as well as the socioeconomic position of those businesses in urban communities.