Maria Berrio: Songlines

Carefully collaged, Berrío’s vibrant and poetic paper worlds revel in the joy of storytelling

Published with Minneapolis Institute of Art/San Jose Museum of Art.

Through a process she terms “painting with paper,” Brooklyn-based artist María Berrío (born 1982) builds fantastical scenes out of meticulously cut and torn paper. Intricate and imaginative, her large-scale compositions blend myth and folklore with the contemporary world. Against the weakening of shared traditions and storytelling, Berrío embraces a wealth of narratives drawn from across time and geography, from the legends of the Colombian countryside where she was raised, to Greek mythology and contemporary crises such as migration and climate change. Published on the occasion of a nationally touring exhibition, Songlines includes texts by Berrío, Katherine Brodbeck, co-curators Lauren Schell Dickens and Leslie Ureña, and an interview with the artist by Valéria Piccoli, alongside copious illustrations and details of Berrío’s world-building work.