Carolina Muñoz Awad

I attribute my success to perseverance and a deep trust in long-term growth. I’ve consistently sought out opportunities — even small or behind-the-scenes roles that did not immediately offer visibility or financial reward — believing that each experience would contribute to building a sustainable and meaningful career.

I’ve learned to value the cumulative impact of “small” steps: continuing to learn, staying open, and committing to work I genuinely care about. Passion has been a compass for me, and I trust that when I invest fully in what matters, new opportunities emerge.

Over time, this mindset has allowed me to sustain myself through a carefully built constellation of freelance, educational, and collaborative roles — a path that is both self-directed and deeply fulfilling.

The best career advice I’ve received is simple: just try it. You don’t have to wait until something feels perfect or fully aligned — sometimes you need to step into an opportunity to truly understand it.

By saying yes to different roles, especially since my time as an MFA student, I’ve been able to learn not only new skills, but also about myself — what energizes me, what challenges me, and what kind of environments I thrive in. Even frustrations have been instructive.

Trying things has given me clarity. And as more possibilities open up, that self-knowledge becomes essential in making intentional choices about where to invest your time and energy.

I would encourage young women entering the arts not to feel pressure to find the “perfect” role right away, or to model their journey on someone else’s path or industry clichés. Careers — especially creative ones — are rarely linear.

If you are multidisciplinary or come from different professional or educational backgrounds, that complexity is not a weakness. In my case, moving from architecture into fine arts initially felt unconventional, even disorienting. But over time, I realized that those intersections were not contradictions — they were foundations.

You can build something custom-made. Your career does not have to exist in one single job that fulfills all your needs and aspirations at once — in fact, that expectation can be limiting. Instead, keep moving, keep experimenting, and allow your path to take shape through experience. Clarity often comes through action.

Balance is one of the most important values in both my work and personal life. I believe in creating space — even in the middle of a busy week — to pause, reset, and reconnect with something simple and creative.

For me, that balance can take many forms. Sometimes it’s working out, grounding myself physically. Other times it’s something much quieter, like carrying a small set of colored pencils and taking a few minutes to fill in a page from a children’s coloring book. Allowing myself to create without pressure — without the expectation of producing a “serious” artwork — is essential.

Those small, playful moments help me decompress, sustain my energy, and stay connected to why I make art in the first place. They remind me that creativity doesn’t always have to be monumental to be meaningful.