No One Can Hear You, Only the Wind, 2012, is a richly detailed example of María Berrío’s signature collage and watercolor technique. The composition of a graceful ballerina leaping across a deep night sky and a kaleidoscopic field of flowers, comes together through an assemblage of decorative papers primarily produced in the Global South—in addition to Berrío’s cherished, handmade Japanese paper—as well as botanical drawings of birds and flowers, a sheaf of dried leaves, and a reproduction of a calendar page from the Limbourg Brothers’ 15^th century illuminated manuscript, Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry. The seamless integration of such disparate materials speaks to the constant interplay of the global and local, the mythical and deeply, politically relevant, in each of Berrío’s works.

 

 

“This process of fusing cultural production from a wide range of places is inherent to the form and, more importantly, to the meaning.”
—María Berrío

 

Berrío is adamant that her work is “informed by every bit of material layered into it, and by every place the materials hail from.”ⁱ The papers, both patterned and plain, are cleverly arranged so that their physical values add depth to the composition; for instance, a paper with a golden wave motif becomes the rich, floating plait of the ballerina’s hair. With each work, Berrío says, she wants “to push the technique [of collage] to its limits,” a goal evident in No One Can Hear You, Only the Wind.ⁱⁱ In the verdant undergrowth below the ballerina, butterflies figure as cut-out creatures, and also as patterns, with strips of wings formed into flower petals. The torn edges of red and purple papers become flower stems, reminiscent of those in Henrí Rousseau’s The Dream, 1910, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

 

Dried leaves stand alongside collaged ones, fusing the real and unreal in a surreal, even magical world of collage and watercolor. This infusion recalls the deep artistic and literary roots of Surrealism and magical realism in Latin America, from the work of Surrealists such as Frida Kahlo and Dorothea Tanning in Mexico, to some of Berrío’s favorite authors, including Pablo Neruda and Gabriel García Márquez, and the oral folklore traditions of indigenous peoples.ⁱⁱⁱ Like these artists and storytellers, Berrío creates a dream world in No One Can Hear You, Only the Wind, and as a native of Colombia who has spent her professional career in New York, she is deeply attuned to the artistic richness of hybrid experience and cultural exchange.^iv

 

Beyond ensuring a textural richness, the physicality of paper holds symbolic meaning for Berrío as well, especially in regard to her archetypal female figures. Berrío’s figures are from her imagination: never inspired by just one model, it’s “a collage of parts,” she says. “I draw my eyes, but maybe somebody else’s nose, and then somebody else’s hands.”^v By unmooring her figures from a particular likeness, she is able to create women who “are embodied ideals of femininity,” relatable to all.^vi The ballerina is one such figure for Berrío; not only are ballet costumes a visual inspiration for the artist, but the profession embodies the dual delicacy and strength of women that Berrío constantly seeks to represent in her work.^vii

 

 “These are the women I want to be: strong, vulnerable, compassionate, courageous, and in harmony with themselves and nature.”
—María Berrío

 

The pale, luminous texture of a semi-transparent handmade paper gives the ballerina’s skin in No One Can Hear You, Only the Wind, “a ghostly pallor” and “otherworldliness” that appears to be “more spirit than flesh,” a material quality the artist sees as central to the presentation of her figures as embodiments of feminine ideals.^viii These women are more idea than reality, and this incorporeality frees them to become relatable to all women. The ballerina is transcendent, leaping through a spirit world created from an international web of materials and cultural references. She represents every woman, every person, as a participant in a feminist, ecologically harmonious future.^ix

 

 

Collectors’ Digest

 

• Phillips holds the auction record for Berrío, achieved at the November 2022 Evening Sale for He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, 2015.

• Berrío currently has a solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, titled The Children’s Crusade, on view through Aug. 6, 2023. Significant recent group exhibitions include Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, Spirit in the Land, through Jul 9. 2023, and The Modern, Fort Worth, Women Painting Women, 2022.

• Her work is in numerous distinguished museum collections, including The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Her work is on permanent, public display in a series of fourteen mosaics at the N subway stop at Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn.

 

 

ⁱ María Berrío, quoted in “As Complicated and Elusive as Reality”: María Berrío’s Many-Layered Collages (with an interview by C.J. Bartunek),” The Georgia Review, Spring 2019, online. 

ⁱⁱ Ibid.

ⁱⁱⁱ Ibid. 

^iv Berrío, quoted in Jenny Gill, “In the Studio: María Berrío,” The Joan Mitchell Foundation, Aug. 8, 2022, online.

^v Berrío, quoted in “A Conversation with María Berrío and Toyin Ojih Odutola,” in Cheryl Brutvan, María Berrío: Esperando mientras la noche florece (Waiting for the night to bloom), exh. cat., Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, 2021, p. 49.

^vi Berrío, quoted in “As Complicated and Elusive as Reality.”

^vii Ibid. 

^viii Ibid. 

^ix Berrío, quoted in Holly Black, “María Berrío: ‘My Characters Are Part of a Full World Who Can’t Exist Without Others,” Elephant, Apr. 13, 2021, online.