Mariana Castillo Deball takes a kaleidoscopic approach to her practice, mediating between science, archaeology, and the visual arts and exploring the way in which these disciplines describe the world. Her installations, performances, sculptures, and editorial projects arise from the recombination of different languages that seek to understand the role objects play in our identity and history. Her works result from a long research process, allowing her to study the different ways in which a historical object can be read as it presents a version of reality that informs and blends into a polyphonic panorama. Seeking to initiate a dialogue with institutions and museums beyond contemporary art, she collaborates with ethnographic collections, libraries, and historical archives. She often produces multiples–books or objects with different uses and formats–to explore how they might generate new territories. Weaving her way through the fields of anthropology, philosophy, and literature, Castillo Deball draws inspiration from a wide range of sources as she engages in the exchange of knowledge as a transforming process for everyone involved.
Read MoreMariana Castillo Deball (1975) lives and works in Berlin.
Earned a BFA from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1997. In 2003, she completed a postgraduate program at Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands. Deball has been awarded with the Prix de Rome (2004), Zurich Art Prize (2012), a fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute (2012), and the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst (2013). She was an artist in residency at the Berliner Künstlerprogramm in Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) in 2011.
Her solo exhibitions include: To-Day, February 20th, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art, United States (2018); Pleasures of association, and poissons, such as love, Galerie Wedding – Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin (2017); Feathered Changes, Serpent Disappearances, Walter and McBean Galleries, San Francisco Art Institute, United States (2016); ¿Quién medirá el espacio, quién me dirá el momento? MACO Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico (2015); Mariana Castillo Deball, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, Portugal (2014); Mariana Castillo Deball, Parergon, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2014); “What we caught we threw away, what we didn’t catch we kept”, CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland (2013); Zurich Art Prize: Uncomfortable Objects, Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland (2012); Este desorden construido, autoriza geológicas sorpresas a la memoria más abandonada, Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City (2011); Between You and the Image of You That Reaches Me, Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, United States (2010); Kaleidoscopic Eye, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Switzerland (2009); Estas ruinas que ves, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2006); Prix de Rome: Institute of Chance, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2004); among others.
Additionally, her work has been included in group exhibitions such as: Hello World. Revision einer Sammlung, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2018); Statues Also Die: Contemporary reflections on heritage and conflict in the Middle-East, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2018); Lecturas de un territorio fracturado, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico (2017); Alors que j'écoutais moi aussi David, Eleanor, Mariana, etc. La Criée centre d’art contemporain, Rennes, France (2017); El orden Natural de las Cosas, Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2016); Ce qui ne sert pas s’oublie, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France (2015); Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014); Arqueológicas, Matadero Centro de Creación Contemporánea, Madrid (2013); Resisting the Present, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (2012); Æther – Une proposition de Christoph Keller, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2011); For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London (2010); The Malady of Writing, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Spain (2009), among others.
She has participated in biennales such as: Sharjah Biennial 13, Tamawuj, United Arab Emirates (2017); Documenta 14, Athens (2017); 8 Berlin Biennale (2014); dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012); 54th Venice Biennial (2011); AB2 HEAVEN 2nd Athens Biennale (2009); Manifesta 7, Trentino – Alto Adige, Italy (2008); 7th Shanghai Biennale, China (2008), among others.
Text courtesy Mendes Wood DM.