BIOGRAPHY
María-Elena Pombo was born in Caracas (Venezuela) and is based in NYC (USA).
She is currently an artist in residency at Wave Hill’s Winter Workspace Program and a member of NEW INC, The New Museum’s incubator for art, design & technology in its Creative Science Track, which focuses on employing scientific inquiry to advance creativity and storytelling.
She was recently fellow at the Bronx’s Museum AIM Program and resident at Yaddo, and Governor’s Island, and more.
Pombo won the 2021 London Design Biennale’s Theme Medal, and has received grants from New York Foundation for the Arts, Queens Council on the Arts, New York Restoration Project, and more.
Her work has been exhibited at Somerset House (London), Mana Contemporary (Jersey City), A/D/O (Brooklyn), SXSW (Austin), Yamamoto-Seika (Osaka), Fabbrica del Vapore (Milan), and more across the USA, Europe, and Japan.
Pombo’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Slowdown, Metal Magazine, i-D Italia, Vogue México, Forbes, and the book ‘True Colors: World Masters of Natural Dyes”.
She is faculty at Parsons School of Design, teaching and developing curriculum for studio classes with a focus on research and experimentation. Pombo was instructor at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the New York Botanical Garden, where she designed and taught classes on natural dyes through a decolonial and non-extractivist lens.
STATEMENT
I work through open-ended and interconnected projects that investigate real and speculative pasts, presents, and futures through installations, sculptures, videos, and moments that play with site-specificity, ephemerality, and participation.
My practice is centered around Earth-matter holding historical and contemporary importance across different cultures and times, which I often gather through collaborations. From avocado-seeds gathered by restaurant-workers, onion-skins gathered by farmers, and more. A framework to engage heterogeneous publics into co-creating contemporary rituals based on cooperation.
Applying both ancient and emerging technologies that draw inspiration from geological processes, I re-contextualize and transform these materials as a metaphor for the need of new ways to understand the world.
My work is based both on embodied knowledge acquired through closely working with materials and research that draws from science, history, nature, mythology, language, and conversations.
