"These are the women I want to be: strong, vulnerable, compassionate, courageous, and in harmony with themselves and nature.”
L
a Cena is undoubtedly one of Maria Berrío's most complete and quintessential examples from her unique and instantly recognizable practice. Inspired by one of the most celebrated Italian Renaissance biblical subjects "The Last Supper", the present work is the result of the artist's painstaking lengthy process, whereby she builds up innumerable pieces and layers of waver –thin Japanese and Korean sheets of paper. To these Berrío adds washes of watercolor in order to create an amalgamation of forms that make up a powerful and fantastical image of a dinner amongst women. Berrío’s work centers on the experience of women, aiming to propose and illustrate spaces of refuge through the form of kaleidoscopic renderings inspired by South American folklore.

© 2022 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /DACS, London
La Cena is the ultimate example of Berrío’s artistic vision through the marvelous and hypnotizing combination of recognizable female forms with cut-outs of delectable fruit and charming animals. Perfectly encapsulating the energy that the women in her work exude, Berrío has noted, “They are embodied ideals of femininity. The ghostly pallor of their skin suggests an otherworldliness; they appear to be more spirit that flesh. These are the women I want to be: strong, vulnerable, compassionate, courageous, and in harmony with themselves and nature… To truly ennoble womanhood, we must discover and appreciate the beauty in every action, big or small” (online).

“My Characters Are Part of a Full World Who Can’t Exist Without Others”

Berrio’s work sees her filter memories of her childhood spent on a farm in Colombia through the frantic lens of her studio practice in New York City; as Adrian Horton observes “If Colombia is the id for Berrío’s Klimt-inspired, meditative pieces, New York is ‘the energy that gets it out, the force, the spirit’,” (Adrian Horton, 'Like Magical Realism: María Berrío on her surreal collages,' The Guardian, 20 June 2020 (online). Undoubtedly, La Cena radiates a vibration that is a direct reflection of her experiences as a native Colombian and residing New Yorker. Deeply connected to the history of Colombian art and literature, the present work recalls the magical realism that characterizes other important literary and artistic figures in Latin America, such as Gabriel García Marquez, Fernando Botero, and Ruben Darío, while also drawing aesthetic and spiritual parallels to international artists like Gustav Klimt and Hilma Af Klint.
Important for Berrío’s practice is the exploration of women's relationship with nature, specifically birds. The present work illustrates birds, butterflies, fish, and an elephant, all which allude to freedom and the possible transcendence of the human soul into other earthly forms. As Berrío explains:
“Birds have been a source of inspiration to people across the world for centuries. To me, birds symbolize freedom of the soul and transcendence of the earthly human form…The dove is a sign of peace in Judeo-Christianity; the hummingbird is a sign of good luck in Latin America; the eagle was thought to bring messages in Ancient Rome; the parrot was worshipped by the Maya. In my collage, all of these beautiful traditions come together to provide a global portrait of hope.”

Combining elements of mythology, craft and culture, La Cena epitomizes Berrío’s groundbreaking practice, which presents optimistic ideals of charged themes and subject matters. Recently the subject of a major survey exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Berrío’s work is held in the permanent collections of a number of prestigious institutional collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, North Carolina and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.