MARU ROJAS / portfolio
STATEMENT & BIO*
Maru Rojas (1982, Mexico City) makes drawings, media art, installations and conceptual artworks. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, Rojas often creates work using creative game tactics, but these are never permissive. Play is a serious matter: during the game, different rules apply than in everyday life and even everyday objects undergo transubstantiation.
Her drawings are characterised by the use of everyday objects in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role. Her works references post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.
Her works focus on the inability of communication which is used to visualise reality, the attempt of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content and the dysfunctions of language. By investigating language on a meta-level, she tries to grasp language. Transformed into art, language becomes an ornament. At that moment, lots of ambiguities and indistinctnesses, which are inherent to the phenomenon, come to the surface.
Her works demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. Maru Rojas currently lives and works in London.
* This statement was produced using an artist statement generator that can be found by clicking on this link and is not be taken literally.
Education
2010
MFA Art Writing. Goldsmiths College, London
Recepient of Goldsmiths International Scholarship
*FONCA Scholarship for postgraduate studies abroad
*Jumex Foundation grant
2010
Contemporary Art Training – Visions of Art
Online Diploma – The Triumph of Painting – The derived advancement of the Painterly beyond other Medias.
2004-2008
BA Fine Arts. Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, México
1st degree, Magna Cum Laude
2005-2006
Exchange Programme. History of Art. University College London, UK
1998 – 2001
Alexander Bain School. IB Diploma, Mexico
Exhibitions
2014
June 2014
Camaradas with George Major
Mexican Embassy, London
June 2014
Lucky Dip Commission
Camberwell Arts Festival, London
2013
July 2013
Now Wakes The Sea
Kinsale Arts Festival, Ireland
2012
December 2012
National Open
Motorcade Flash Parade, Bristol, UK
July 2012
Language Most Makes a man, speak that I may see thee…
Goldsmiths Postgraduate Show, London
2011
July 2011
Summer Salon, collective exhibition
IAF Islington Arts Factory, London
June 2011
And there it was… collective event
Chisenhale Gallery, London
May 2011
Tick the Box: Exploring the Intricacies of Categorisation
Southside Shopping Centre, Wandsworth, London
Tick the Box: Part 2
Sprout Gallery, London
2010
August 2010
Contemporary Art of the Central Mountains of Mexico
Turchin Centre, University of Boone, North Carolina, US
Collaboration with artist Paola Montoya
May 2010
How Beautiful Ugliness Is
Red Gate Gallery, London
2009
December 2009
9th Encounter of Contemporary Art
Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Puebla, Mexico
Selected in the bidimensional category, highly commended
2008
June 2008
Memoria Pixel
La Luz de la Nevera, UDLA, Mexico
2007
June 2007
Heráclito (544-484 a.c)
Galeria Sitio 3, Puebla, México
March 2007
Topografías
La Luz de la Nevera, UDLA, Mexico
Commissions and Residencies
October 2013 - November 2013
Bundanon Trust, Australia
UNESCO/Aschberg Artist in Residence
August 2013
Aabenraa Artweek
Residency in public spaces
July 2013
A-N Interface Writing Bursary
Neo:art prize, neo:gallery in Bolton
October 2011 – March 2012
Whitechapel Gallery, Seminar Series
Art Writing is an anthology of examples
June 2012
A-N Interface Writing Bursary
Quarantania, John Hansard Gallery
January 2012
A-N Interface Writing Bursary
In collaboration with Peckham Space
July 2011
A-N Interface Writing Bursary
Catherine Yass at De La Warr Pavillion
October 2010 – May 2011
Wandsworth Arts Team
Diversity Commission
September 2010 – June 2011
Chisenhale Gallery
And There it Was...
Writing & Publications
Sept 2013, Jan 2014, This is Tomorrow, commissioned reviews
http://www.thisistomorrow.info/viewArticle.aspx?artId=2266
April 2013, Young Fresh and Relevant, Issue 3
Nov 2012, COPY: Charts, with Yorkshire Sculpture Park
July 2012, Idioglossia, an Art Writing Glossary
http://b--k.co.uk/2012/idioglossia/
April 2012, A-N Magazine
March 2012, Tengen Magazine, Issue 4
http://issuu.com/tengenmag/docs/tengenissue4
March 2012, A-N Magazine
December 2011, Young Fresh and Relevant, Issue 2
http://youngfreshrelevant.com/issue2.html