The Department of Sculpture + Extended Media presents a visiting artist lecture by Marilyn Boror Bor on Tuesday, January 23 at 12:15 P.M. at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU (601 W Broad St, Richmond, VA 23220).
ABOUT THE ARTIST–
Marilyn Boror Bor is a Maya-Kaqchiquel indigenous artist whose body of work covers multiple media, including painting, photography, engraving, installation, and performance. In her practice, she researches and explores how the concept of identity is shaped and determined by its immediate context, in order to unveil racist, patriarchal, and colonial structures rooted in contemporary cultural norms, particularly those that have built Latin America’s contemporary history.
Her work focuses on identifying the fissures in a system based on a colonial epistemological representation that holds territorial control of language —spoken or graphic—to retain power. Consequently, her artistic projects continually fixate on the preservation and recovery of indigenous languages through analytic and critical works, in addition to the thought and feeling that translates into cosmogonies. She has focused on the power of words as historical triggers of cultural signifiers, and how these relate to questions about identity; through the use of language and her body as a space for political denouncement and resistance, she aims to transform the present through the understanding of a millenary past that has been rendered invisible and historically fragmented.
Boror Bor holds a Bachelor’s of Art from San Carlos University of Guatemala. She has completed several artistic residencies, among them: the Research Residency at the Ama Amoedo Foundation, Uruguay; Production Residency 25hrs. Hotel Zurich, Switzerland; Workshop/open studio – Exercices of Exploration on contemporary Maya- México Arte-UNAM; residency at La Nueva Fábrica Guatemala, she was part of the Artistic Residency Ritual in Satisfactory Art Space Costa Rica 2022, and Residency Galeria Muy in Chiapas, Mexico.
Her work has been exhibited in spaces such as Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Spain; MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Puerto Rico; MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Panamá; Galerie im körnerpark in Berlin and Whitebox Munich, in Germany; Sur Gallery, Canada; Galería Muy, Mexico; Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara, California; Museo Precolombino de Arte Chileno, among others. She was selected to participate in The 35th Sao Paulo Biennial “Choreographies of the Impossible” 2023; Bienal Sur Argentina 2021; 19, 20 and 22 and 23 Bienal de Arte Paiz, Guatemala; Bienal del Sur “Pueblos en Resistencia “Venezuela and Bienal en Resistencia Guatemala 2020. Her career includes solo and group exhibitions in various countries such as the United States, Mexico, Spain, Germany, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and Ecuador and throughout Central America. Her work belongs to the Vasos Comunicantes Collection of the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, Spain.