Viewing María Berrío: The End of Ritual at Victoria Miro Gallery

The Bogota-born, Brooklyn-based María Berrío also returns to London this week with her solo exhibition, End of Ritual, opening at Victoria Miro. The artist has become known for her large-scale, laboriously-crafted collaged paintings, using the most delicate Japanese and watercolour. Her semi-fictional scenes draw on the familial and folkloric, often depicting women and children in fantastical and richly narrative scenes.

For the works created for this exhibition, Berrío collaborated with dancers from the New York City based GALLIM dance company, who improvised movements, wearing props and costumes from the artist’s personal collection. These sessions inspired the final works, where characters move through crowded interiors.

These scenes mark a distinctive new direction for the artist, with more urgent and immediate concerns for the enviroment, and the impact of geopolitical forces on women and children. “It’s almost aggressive – an interpellation. The tumult on canvas proceeds from a compositional method but addresses the tumult of the world,” writes Siddhartha Mitter in a new publication accompanying the show.