Closed Geometry

Born in Colombia, the New York-based artist María Berrío marries fact and fiction, politics and poetry in work that projects the realities of the present, especially as they impact women, children, immigrants, and people of color, onto imaginary scenes. Closed Geometry, which is built from cut and pasted pieces of Japanese paper with added areas of watercolor, comes from a series of works that narrate the journey of a woman displaced from time and unmoored from her community. Forced from her home by an apocalypse, she wanders what remains of the world, taking refuge in nature, where signs of rebirth and rejuvenation are already present. In the text accompanying her 2022 exhibition of this series, "The Land of the Sun," Berrío wrote: "When the world ended, the woman fled the fallen cities in search of refuge... She found herself in the land of the sun, where the world was shaped like a woman’s belly and she was the only soul within... Sometimes she would go down to the water. In her the river sang, at least in bygone days. She would lie back in the water staring up at the sun, amazed she could still float with a heart full of broken stones..." [1]

Although the subject of Closed Geometry suggests quietude, escape, and possibly acquiescence, Berrío builds tension and anticipation through the composition, with its strange choreography of space. Berrío’s childhood memories of the Colombian landscape and close study of magical realist literature from South America provide a rich vein of inspiration for this and other works.

[1] "María Berrío: ‘The Land of the Sun’," Victoria Miro Venice, September 17–October 29, 2022.