MARÍA BERRÍO: THE END OF RITUAL

Victoria Miro is pleased to announce María Berrío’s solo exhibition entitled The End of Ritual.

November 21, 2024 - January 18, 2025

The End of Ritual depicts moments of disquiet articulated within densely populated interiors, spaces where the old world meets the new and a restless dynamic unfolds between performers and spectators in and out of the frame.

María Berrío is celebrated for works that draw upon aspects of mythology and folklore to create narratives that address contemporary issues of identity, agency, and survival, particularly those experienced by women and children in the face of overwhelming ecological, economic or geo-political forces. These new works take place in often crowded interiors, where some characters appear governed by mysterious forces, while others go about their business unconcerned. For the first time, she has collaborated with dancers – from the New York City-based GALLIM contemporary dance company – who, supplied with masks and costumes from the artist’s collection, were invited to improvise movements which fed into Berrío’s working process.

Aspects of fantasy, masquerade, history and our frenetic present are woven together, while the artist’s blending of Japanese papers and watercolour, tender and tactile but always with the turbulent splice of collage as a resounding echo, further articulates the work’s fractured narratives.

The results are something like a vibrant, surreal folktale or, as Siddhartha Mitter defines in his essay for the accompanying publication, ‘the fabric of dreams – no longer their unfurled narratives, but the rough and hectic machinery of their making, the way in which signs, memories and allusions escape the category fetters of the rational mind and collide in unquiet sleep.’