ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a multidisciplinary visual artist focused on mixed media installations and site-specific interventions.
In the work, I recreate artificially what I find naturally, drawing from an analysis of public space to intervene, disrupt, and question overlooked landscapes. Through photography, collage, and light projection, I cut, reassemble, and condense images. By compressing gestures onto flat surfaces, I honor broken spaces that speak to the passage of time and action in urban spaces. Surfaces—walls, buildings, and objects—serve as supportive skins that carry encrypted messages. My use of color—fuchsia, reflective silver, and black—reflects my upbringing around screens and the tone of my speech is a raging RGB. Through superficial layering, I aim to heighten haptic sensations and propose an experience of being absorbed by images.
I work with paper, print, light, and reflective materials such as emergency blankets to wrap objects and architectural volumes. By adding a thin layer highlighting whatever is wrapped, I aim to fascinate and create mystery around it. Because the objects I wrap are often overlooked, abandoned, or everyday materials and sites, I use the fabric to unlock a forgotten or potential narrative: small gestures with monumental impacts.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
María Burundarena, born in 1989 in Paris and raised in Buenos Aires, is a Chicago-based visual artist and educator. Her work spans textile design, photography, and large-scale installations using print media, light projection, and reflective materials. She has exhibited at ZAZ 10 Times Square, Chicago Athletic Association, Hyde Park Art Center, Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Mayfield, Comfort Station, The Franklin, among others. In 2024, Burundarena was named one of Chicago’s Breakout Artists and received the DCASE Individual Artists Program grant. In 2025, she was awarded the Creative Catalyst Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. She holds a BFA in Garment Design from La Universidad de Buenos Aires (FADU), where she also taught, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is currently a lecturer in the Contemporary Practices Department.
© Maria Burundarena