Marilyn Boror

Lives and works in San Juan Sacatepéquez, Guatemala

Artist statement

Maya-Kaqchikel indigenous artist whose body of work covers multiple media, includinG painting, photography, engraving, installation, and performance. In her practice she researches and explores how the concept of identity is shaped and determined by its immediate context, in order to unveil racist, patriarcal and colonial structures rooted in contemporary cultural norms, particularly those that have built Latin America’s contemporary history. Her work focuses on identifying the fissures in a system based on a colonial epistemological representation that holds territorial control of language —spoken or graphic—in order to retain power. Consequently, her artistic projects continually fixate on the preservation and recovery of indigenous languages through analytic and critical works, in addition to the thought and feeling that translates into cosmogonies. In her work, she has focused on the power of words as historical triggers of cultural signifiers, and how these relate to questions about identity; through the use of language and her body as a space for politic denouncement and resistance, she aims to transform the present through the under- standing of a millenary past that has been rendered invisible and historically fragmented.

Artwork