Maria Paris Borda is a Colombian artist based in Amsterdam, working with text and installation. Her work often begins with something elusive: the slip of a mistranslated word, the overlap of daylight and artificial illumination. She punctuates these moments when something familiar is briefly out of place, exploring what becomes possible when the linguistic and spatial structures through which we understand the world reveal themselves to be unstable.
Approaching each medium as a form of poetry, Maria assembles constellations of text, sound, light and objects, often using repurposed industrial materials such as roofing panels, packaging tape and confetti. In her work, materials retain their histories and associations as they enter new relations with architecture and light; text similarly shifts as it moves between languages and the space of the page.
Her writing takes the form of poems and publications, as well as spoken and spatial text that operates alongside objects rather than explaining them. She writes from found text, observations and translated language, using spacing, punctuation and repetition as the backbone of her work. She isolates and rearranges words and symbols across the page, giving the text an almost sculptural presence.
Maria draws on the legacy of Latin American Conceptualism, bringing a feminist perspective to its use of language and material resourcefulness. The poetic and spiritual dimensions of her work emerge through an attention to what is overlooked and to how meaning and value are assigned to it.
A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she also obtained an MFA in the Approaching Language Department at the Sandberg Instituut. Her work has been exhibited in the Oude Kerk (NL), Het HEM (NL), Paris Photo (FR), among others. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the Colombian National Prize for Emerging Artists. Since 2021, Maria has been co-founder and editor of attempt press, a Rotterdam-based small-scale publishing house focused on books, editions, and collaborative projects with other artists and writers.
* Full portfolio available on request at: mariaparisborda@gmail.com