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Paloma Dawkins (She/They)




Photo: Arianna Molly

Paloma Dawkins is a Canadian/Mexican artist and award winning video game director. Dawkins’ games explore the intersections of mythology, technology, and ecology, using speculative storytelling to question the structures that govern our existence. 


Dawkins’ hand drawn animation evoke a spirit within them that brings inanimate things to life, players are encouraged to engage in deep ecological listening reminding us that everything has agency and offers us potential for kinship. In this way, her games are places where we can suspend our disbelief and imagine an inclusive and shared ecological future. Dawkins’ has animated and directed games with the National Film Board of Canada, Victoria & Albert Museum, Factory International and has won a Canadian Screen Academy award. She has received grants from Canada Council for the Arts, CALQ, Canada Media Fund and is currently pursuing an MFA in Critical Ecological Practices at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

“I situate myself as a second-generation immigrant, a white-passing person of color with a maternal lineage traced to Nahuatl-speaking peoples of the Valley of Mexico and a settler lineage from Britain. I move with the privilege of passing as white while remaining tethered to Indigenous and immigrant histories. My practice emerges from these intersections, seeking relational ways of creating and sharing art. I believe it is essential to imagine ecological futures that recognize both our capacities and our responsibilities to tend to the garden of the earth. Through this lens, my work blends the boundaries between nature and technology, engaging with themes such as biopolitics, migration, the entanglement of virtual and ancestral memory, paradoxes of digital existence, environmental collapse, and the endurance of mythic narratives.”



palomadawkins(at)gmail(dot)com

2025  Redcorner Nomadic Residency | Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
    Participated in a research residency that explored nomadic           families
2025  Ludodrome | Centre SAT Montreal, QC
    Performed “Calling Mother Whale”
2025  Athens Digital Arts Festival | Athens, Greece
    “Oceanarium” presented in computer games catagory
2025  Research Creation, Community Engagement, and Open Social Scholarship | Canning, NS
    “Research Creation” panelist with Natalie Loveless, Erin Manning,     and Sheena Bernett
2025  Polaris Prize | Toronto, Canada
    Created short animation for their 2025 website
2024  International Video Arts Forum | Dammam, Saudi Arabia 
    “Psychic Spring” Shown at the 6th edition in the animation           catagory
2024  GameBCN | Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
    Participated in an incubator for new video game studios
2024  Phi Center | Montreal, QC
    “White Rushes” directed and live performed as part of series         Embodied Spaces
2024  Arsenal | Montreal, QC
    Presented Apocablyss Studios at Composite #36
2024  Oboro | Montreal, QC
    “Steps of Yu” Multi-media live painting performance
2023  Gaia International Assembly | Toronto, ON
    3 day symposium for game art curators internationally
2023  Artificial Museum | Toronto, ON 
    “Translunar Formations PIX FILM Collective”
2022  Lunenburg School of the Arts| Lunenburg, NS 
    “Psychic Spring” solo show
2022  Baby Ghosts | Toronto, ON 
    Social Impact Investment Readiness · Weird Ghosts · Digital 2021  Damage Labs Cohort 1 | Toronto, ON 
    Incubator to start a game studio · DMG
2021  LikeLike Gallery | Pittsburgh PA 
    “Welcome to Apocablyss” Paloma Dawkins Solo show
2020  MAAM MassArt Exhibit | Boston,USA 
    “Game Changers: Video Games & Contemporary Art”

2019  Garage Museum of Contemporary art | MOSCOW, Russ 
    Hackethon Host “The Coming World”
2019  Arsenal Contemporary Art | Montreal, QC
    “Pixelles + Popagenda
2019  Victoria & Albert Museum | London, UK
    “Videogames:Design/Play/Disrupt”
2019  Cinekid 2019 | AMSTERDAM Dec 
    Winner of Audience Choice award for Best Media Project
2019  Manchester International Festival | Manchester, UK 
    Commissioned to create Songs of the Lost 2018  FADU | Argentina Oct 
    Speaker
2018  MiM | MTL Aug
    Speaker
2018  Future Reality Lab | NYC May 
    Animator and artist in residence
2018 The National Film Board of Canada, MTL
    Artistic and Creative Director, Animator Museum of Symmetry


Projects

Songs of the Lost | Factory International Festival
- Wings Diversity award nominee Amaze Fest
- Pitchfork Article, Fader, DJMag, Creative Review, FactMag, CrackMag about Jlin’s soundtrack for SotL
- Kilscreen, Rock Paper Shotgun articles about the game


Oceanarium, Canada Council for the Arts
- premiering at the V&A Museum, UK as part of Videogames:Design/Play/Disrupt January 25th 2019 
- Arsenal Contemporary
Cave, NYU Future Reality labs June 2018
Art Director, animator
- Premiering at Siggraph 2018

Museum of Symmetry, NFB November 2014 – June 2018
Art Director, game designer, animator, writer
- Winner Best MediaLab Project 2019 Audience Choice CineKid 
- Winner Audience choice award Fantasia 2019
- Winner Best Virtual Reality Game Academy of Canadian film and television
- Winner Best Interactive Fiction Award NUMIX 
- Winner of Out of Body experience award North Bend 2018
- Winner of Peoples Choice award Fivars 2018
- Premiering at A-Maze Berlin April 2018
- Article in Kotaku
- Annecy International Animation Festival 2018 Official Selection
- Siggraph 2018 Official Selection
- Fantoche 2018
- Ottawa International Animation Festival 2018 Competition 
- Halcyon Labs Washington DC
- Article in Rock Paper Shotgun
- Article in Moving Stories

Palmystery June-Nov 2016
Animator, programmer
- Official Selection of Amaze Johannesburg 2017
- Official Selection Fantastic Arcade 2017
- Transmundane at Dunlop Gallery
- Vice article ‘Mindlessly Dance Through Cartoon Fantasies in ‘Palmystery’
- Mild Rumpus 2018

Alea, HumbleBundle June – Sept 2015
Video game designer, animator
- Commissioned by Humble Bundle and presented at Fantastic Arcade in Austin TX running from September 28th to October 1st 2015 at the Alamo Theatre
- Day of the Devs in San Fransisco Nov 7th 2015
- BabyCastle’s Gallery, NYC May 1st 2016
- MAGfest January 5th – 8th 2017
- Article on Vice, Rhizome and Killscreen

Gardenarium July 2014 – Jan 2015
Programming, game design, animation, writing
- EMP museum Seattle, Washington October 2015 – present
- Mild Rumpus March 2 – 6th 2015 during GDC in San Francisco at the Moscone Center
- Articles in Polygon, Killscreen, Rock Paper Shotgun


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Mark