L a Cama is a masterful example of María Berrío’s extraordinary approach to composition. Incorporating elements of mythology, craft and culture, the surface of the canvas is built up with layers of delicately glimmering, wafer-thin Japanese handmade paper. Elephant-headed dancers flit elegantly across the surface, enshrined by a kaleidescope of butterflies that flutter throughout both framing the ethereal figures and adding to the psychedelic effect of the composition. As the artist lays down layer upon layer of paper to achieve her intricate and enchanting collage, so too do the figures overlap and intertwine such that it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish the individual from the throng. The interwoven and complementary relationship of the female figures in the present work underscores the symbolism of the elephant as a famously matriarchal creature, as these hybrid figures gather in a dynamic yet gentle embrace.

In María Berrío’s words, the women who appear in her work “are embodied ideals of femininity. The ghostly pallor of their skin suggests an otherworldliness; they appear to be more spirit than flesh. These are the women I want to be: strong, vulnerable, compassionate, courageous, and in harmony with themselves and nature.” (María Berrío in conversation with C.J Bartunek, “As Complicated and Elusive as Reality,” The Georgia Review, Spring 2019 (online)) Drawing upon the influence of the South American Magical Realist authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Gabriel García Márquez, Berrío sees her work as a way of celebrating the vast diversity of peoples and traditions that comprise the Latin American world, not directly but rather through fantasy, “in an attempt to create a narrative that is as complicated and elusive as reality. (Ibid.)

Recently the subject of a major mid-career 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.