María Berrío was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1982, completed her BFA at Parsons School of Design in 2004, and her MFA at the New York School of Visual Arts.
Berrío’s solo exhibition The Children’s Crusade was on view at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, from February to August 2023. Her first survey show, María Berrío: Esperando mientras la noche florece (Waiting for the Night to Bloom), was on view at The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach from January until May 2021. The artist’s work was featured in Women Painting Women, a thematic exhibition featuring 46 female artists who choose women as subject matter in their works, held at The Modern, Fort Worth, from May to September 2022. Also in 2022, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, displayed recent acquisitions for the first time, including Berrío’s 2020 sculpture The Petition.
Additional recent institutional group exhibitions include Spirit in the Land, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, USA (2023); Born in Flames: Feminist Futures, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, USA (2021); Labor: Motherhood & Art in 2020, University Art Museum at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA (2020); Present Tense: Recent Gifts of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (2019); People Get Ready at Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC (2018), Prospect.4 Triennial, New Orleans (2017–2018), Art on Paper Biennial, Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, NC (2017), CUT N MIX, El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY (2015). Other important exhibitions include María Berrío: A Day’s Cadence, an extended reality (XR) exhibition on Vortic Collect, Victoria Miro, London, UK (2020); María Berrío, Caroline Walker, Flora Yukhnovich, Victoria Miro, London, UK (2019); A Cloud’s Roots, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2019); In a Time of Drought, Praxis International Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2017); The Harmony of the Spheres, Praxis International Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2015). Her work can also be seen in the public realm at the N subway stop at Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, where 14 of the artist’s works have been translated in mosaic using a variety of media including glass, ceramic and enamel.
Berrío’s work is in permanent collections including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, USA; Dallas Museum of Art, USA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), USA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; Museum Of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA; Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, New York, USA; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, USA; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, Florida, USA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, USA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, USA; Weatherspoon Museum of Art at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China.