Mariana Castillo Deball was born in Mexico City in 1975. She lives and works in Berlin. Castillo Deball studied visual arts at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in 1997. In 2003, she completed her postgraduate studies at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (NL). Mariana Castillo Deball combines her artistic practice with seminars, lectures and workshops.

Solo exhibitions

New Museum, New York, USA (2019); MUMA, Monash University, Melbourne, AU (2019); Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago, USA (2018); Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico (2018); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah Georgia, USA (2018); Galerie Wedding, Berlin, Germany (2017); San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, USA (2016); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico (2015); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2014); Musée Régional D’art Contemporain, Sérignan, France (2015); CCA, Glasgow, Great Britain (2013); Chisenhale Gallery, London, Great Britain (2013); Museo Experimentelles El Eco, Mexico City, Mexico (2011); Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, USA (2010).

Group exhibitions (selection)

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2018); LACMA, Los Angeles, USA (2017); 32nd São Paolo Biennial, Brazil (2016); Liverpool Biennial, Great Britain (2016); 8th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, Germany (2014); documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2013); 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2011).

Mariana Castillo Deball closely interlaces art and research. Her artistic works often focus on archaeological finds, which the artist analyses and presents in terms of their cultural utilisation. In this, traces of use of the objects come into focus as do the artist’s own free associations with the history of the found or already archived objects. This process of deconstruction gives rise to works in very different media, such as drawing, film, sculpture, installation and performance, with which Castillo Deball considerably expands the possibilities of artistic representation.

The class of Mariana Castillo Deball is an interdisciplinary working artist class. In this context, students engage with their individual points of view in the form of different media and modes of expression.

The interpretation of the concept of art itself can be found in the works in the following way: art is an essential part of life, but not the only relevant one. That is why it is important to integrate the other areas of life into art and to engage with them reciprocally.

The discourse in the class deals intensively, among other things, with various cultural, social and linguistic phenomena, which result in particular from the internationality of many of the students.