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Maria Gaspar is an interdisciplinary artist negotiating the politics of location through installation, sculpture, sound, and performance. Gaspar has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Latinx Artist Fellowship, a United States Artists Fellowship, the Frieze Impact Prize, the Sor Juana Women of Achievement Award in Art and Activism from the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the Chamberlain Award for Social Practice from the Headlands Center for the Arts.
Gaspar's projects have been supported by Art for Justice Fund, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship, Creative Capital, a Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant, and the Art Matters Foundation.
Gaspar has lectured and exhibited at venues including MoMA PS1, New York, NY; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the African American Museum, Philadelphia, PA; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She is an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, holds an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.
2023
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Oil pastel on individual archival Inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Paper
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41 * 75 inches
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MG0022
Maria Gaspar's Cloud Out series of paintings pictures the disappearance of a carceral facility, in this case the Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois (the largest single-site facility of its kind in the U.S.), through the extension of the "sky" into our view of the outside of the jail. For the incarcerated, often the only view that is available is of the open sky. That sky then becomes a symbol of the wider world, and of the freedom that is being denied to people on the "inside." Gaspar's "cloud out" creates a new landscape, and a new horizon, by which to imagine the ideal of abolition and the meaning of freedom.
Become a Member2023 Compositions (solo), Institute of the Arts and Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA
2023 Force of Things (solo), El Museo Del Barrio, New York, NY
2016 Brown Brilliance Darkness Matter (solo), National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL
2016 On the Border of What Is Formless and Monstrous (solo), Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, IL
2015 Into Body Into Wall, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Chicago, IL
2013 Gaspar/Hall, The Franklin, Chicago, IL
2011 All That Also Means To See (solo), Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
2010 Maria Gaspar/Helene Maureen Cooper: New Work, Dominican University, River Forest, IL
2009 Oblation for A Parade (solo), UBS 12 x 12 New Artists/New Work, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
2024 San Juan PolyGraphic Triennial, San Juan, Puerto Rico
2024 Faces of Resilience, Mason Exhibitions, George Mason University, Arlington, VA
2024 Seeing Through Stone, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
2024 No Justice Without Love, Gund Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio
2023 Xican-a.o.x Body, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside,
CA
2023 Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New
York, NY
2023 No Justice Without Love, Ford Foundation Gallery, New York, NY
2022 Double Life, Elaine Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
2022 Another Justice: By Any Medium Necessary, For Freedoms, EXPO Chicago, Chicago, IL
2022 Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center,
Cincinnati, OH
2022 Radical Soil, The Latinx Project, New York University, New York, NY
2021 Sound Walks, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA
2021 Estamos Bien, El Museo de Barrio, New York, NY
2021 Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, The Abroms-Engle Institute for the Visual Arts, University of
Alabama, Birmingham, AL
2020 Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, MoMA PS1, New York, NY
2020 In Plain Sight, collective skywriting above immigrant detention centers (conceptualized by Cassils and rafa
esparza), Nationwide, USA
2020 A Mythic Time, The Luminary, St. Louis, MO
2020 Barring Freedom, San José Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
2020 Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Carceral State, Tufts University, Medford, MA
2020 Illuminating the Darkness: Our Carceral Landscape, Florida Prison Education Project, University of Central
Florida, Orlando, FL
2019 …And Other Such Stories, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago, IL
2019 Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Carceral State, Tufts University, Medford, MA
2019 (In)Justice Systems, Brentwood Arts Exchange, Brentwood, MD
2018 Talking to Action, Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
2018 A Body Measured Against the Earth, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
2018 Bad News, Ralph Arnold Gallery, Loyola University, Chicago, IL
2018 Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Carceral State, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX
2018 On the Inside Out, James W. & Lois I. Richmond Center for Visual Arts, Kalamazoo, MI
2018 Expanded Threads, Latino Arts Gallery, Milwaukee, WI
2017 Carceral States, Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, Lynchburg, VA
2017 Memoria Presente, National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL
2016 For Freedoms, Curated by Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY
2016 Not Just Another Pretty Face, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL
2016 EXPO Chicago, Curated by Monique Meloche, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL
2016 Incarceration Nation, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO
2016 Arresting Patterns: Perspectives on Race, Criminal Justice, Artistic Expression, and Community, African
American Museum, Philadelphia, PA
2016 Present Standard, Curated by Edra Soto and Josue Pellot, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL
2015 First Elmhurst Art Museum Biennial, Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL
2015 Arresting Patterns: Perspectives on Race, Criminal Justice, Artistic Expression, and Community, Artspace, New
Haven, CT
2015 Spectra, UNO St. Claude, New Orleans, LA
2015 After Today, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL
2015 Minimale2, Leiter Alpineum Produzentengalerie, Lucerne, Switzerland
2015 Material Normal Monumental, Riverside Arts Center, Riverside, IL
2014 Public Secrets (by Marinella Senatore), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Switzerland
2013 Pulso, Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI
2013 El Normal Monumental, Garcia Squared Contemporary, Kansas City, MO
2013 10 x 10 Exhibition and Silent Auction, Threewalls Gallery, Chicago, IL
2012 Home: Public or Private, 6018NORTH, Chicago, IL
2012 WE: Out There, Reykjavik, Iceland Living by Example (by Edra Soto and Dan Sullivan), Northeastern Illinois
University, Chicago, IL
2011 Unfinished Business: Arts Education, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, Chicago, IL
2011 Territories, Marwen Foundation, Chicago, IL
2010 Ground Floor, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL
2010 National, University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal, IL
2010 After Adelita: Myths, Heroes and Revolutionaries, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
2009 These Are Yours, Too, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL
