Mariana Castillo Deball

1975 — México City, México

Information

Mariana Castillo Deball — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

Portrait of Mariana Castillo Deball, © Photo: Victoria Tamaschko

Sculptor and multimedia artist.

Mariana Castillo Deball focuses her production through a multifaceted triple interest, which we can compare with that of three possible perspectives: the archaeologists’, historians’ and ethnographers’, in deciphering codices, sculptures, installations, performances, symbols and objects. Philosophy and literature are also part of her research interests and editorial projects seeking to understand the role objects play in our identity and history.

M. Castillo Deball bases her work on Mexican artisanry and on archaeological remains of the Mayan and Aztec civilisations, as an apparently very clear source of inspiration for her pieces: a contemporary reinterpretation of the vestiges of the Pre-Columbian civilisations that have survived colonial destruction – a reinterpretation that passes through the artist’s filter to be re-read by the viewer. Her work also relies on the study of altered documents from libraries and museums – copies, facsimiles and digital reproductions, created to compensate destructions and looting from the colonization.

Ethnology as a backdrop reflects concerns regarding historical and cultural legacies, their twisting over time and other possible reinterpretations. As M. Castillo Deball herself says: “People often have a clear idea of what they are making, but things take on a life of their own and give us unexpected answers”.

Stories are passed on by the telling of real events, which then become legends or history, and the artist explores a way to approach them critically through a presentation seemingly playful and poetic, but which is harsh and true under that first friendly disguise. Beware, because beneath this approaching, lie other – less innocent – readings.

M. Castillo Deball studied visual arts at UNAM in Mexico City (1997) and later undertook a postgraduate programme at the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands (2003). 2012 was an important year for her career, during which she participated in Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s Documenta (13)and was awarded the Zurich Art Prize.

M. Castillo Deball’s work express itself freely on site-specific, drawings, ceramics, textiles and artists books, and she also has explored multimedia performances, such as in Arqueológica at Matadero, Madrid, 2013, where she developed a piece based on traditional folklore Chinelo dancers from the Mexican state of Morelos, richly dressed and mocking the Spanish conquerors. This work was integrated in an installation for the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst, presented at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2013. Once again, M. Castillo Deball explores free association techniques to tell a story of her own, while relying on the weaknesses of history itself to emphasise the disappearance in time of the original trace.

Since 2024 she developed a permanent piece for the new LACMA Gavin Geffen galleries plaza’s floor, Feathered Changes, designed by architect Peter Zumthor, which opened in April 2026.

Virginia Torrente

A biography produced as part of the +1 programme.