Pili Cuairán (ella/she/her) is a Mexican curator, museum specialist, cultural heritage researcher, and translator. Born, raised, and educated in Mexico City, she holds a licenciatura in Architecture and a research-based Master’s in Art Studies. She worked for the Mexican Ministry of Culture at the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (2014-2020) researching collections nationwide and curating national and international exhibitions. Her work implemented innovative inclusion strategies that merged digital humanities with multi-lingual and multi-sensory content within immersive interpretation spaces.
In August 2020, she joined Washington University in St. Louis as a Ph.D. student in the Hispanic Studies program to reflect on her curatorial practice and on the meanings and uses of cultural heritage today. With an interdisciplinary approach to research, she currently studies how heritage is conceived, appropriated, modified, and curated in the context of institutional crisis, mass migration, and systemic violence, in and beyond Mexico.
She is pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies and has focused on literary translation of transmedial works such as sonic poetry, literature in dialogue with music, and traditional and contemporary songs.
She served as Editorial Assistant for the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos (Sept. 2021-Aug. 2022) and is currently a member of the Director’s Advisory Committee for the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.