Episode 106: Ada Trillo (Documentary Photography)

Today’s guest is Ada Trillo a queer, first-generation Mexican-American artist who merges documentary and fine art in her photography. Growing up on the border between Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, inspired her to explore national and metaphorical borders of inequality in her work. She focuses on walls of inclusion and exclusion, such as those based on climate and violence related to migration, as well as internal exclusions resulting from long-standing barriers of race, class, gender, and trauma that have been influenced by colonization.

Trillo’s photographs are included in the permanent collections of renowned museums and institutions including the Library of Congress, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and The Cleveland Museum of Art.

Ada Trillo was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography 2024, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship in 2022, The Eddie Adams Workshop Canon Award in 2022, The Female In Focus award in 2020, The Leeway Foundation Transformation Award, The Me & Eve Grant with the Center of Photographic Arts in Santa Fe. Additionally, she received First Place in the editorial category at the Tokyo International Foto Awards.

Trillo’s first monograph, La Caravana Del Diablo: On the Run from the Northern Triangle to America, was published by Komma (Netherlands) in 2021. It is a powerful account of seven years of traveling with refugees and migrants from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trillo’s Photographs have been published in renowned publications, including The Guardian, Vogue, Smithsonian Magazine, and Mother Jones. Trillo has showcased her work globally, including in New York City, Philadelphia, Luxembourg, England, Italy, Germany, and Japan. She holds degrees from the Istituto Marangoni in Milan and Drexel University in Philadelphia. Trillo is also a member of The Diversify Photo Community.

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