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Artist brings ‘overlooked’ Chicago spaces to the forefront in immersive West Town exhibition

Posted on by Pranco
Artist brings ‘overlooked’ Chicago spaces to the forefront in immersive West Town exhibition

WEST TOWN — Tree branches, emergency blankets and wooden beams are just some of the materials in artist María Burundarena’s new exhibition, “Insula,” which brings elements of abandoned Chicago landscapes to life in a West Town gallery.

The opening reception for “Insula” is Friday from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Chicago Artists Coalition, 2130 W. Fulton St. The exhibition, curated by Vasia Rigou, runs through Dec. 19.

The immersive exhibition – named after the Latin word for island – is filled with large-scale installations that recreate parts of the city, bridging reality and imagination and capturing ‘the fleeting connection between city and memory’.

It is the latest addition to Burundarena’s multi-dimensional art world, filled with reflective materials, photography, sculpture, light and textiles, among others.

In creating “Insula,” Burundarena was “focused on spaces that are abandoned in the city and marked by the passage of time,” she said.

Like an island, the places that inspired Burundarena’s art can feel disconnected from their surroundings and past. One of those sites is on Northerly Island, an artificial peninsula where Meigs Airport operated from 1948 to 2003.

“The city destroyed the airport,” Burundarena said. “After many years the tide of the lakes started to push it out, so there is a very strange, desolate space on Northerly Island. I went there to make a lot of photographic records of that. So I go out, I take pictures and I recreate what I encounter (in art).”

María Burundarena was inspired by rocks and concrete on Northerly Island for her Insula exhibition. Credit: Maria Burundarena

Another piece in the exhibition was inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, Burundarena said. Burundarena lived in the Loop at the time and often found broken glass in the area. She began taking photographs of the shards and working with shiny materials to reflect that texture in her work.

“For this particular show, I really like to think about how art could reactivate those spaces, or make us look at what we see every day through the lens of beauty and care,” Burundarena said. “Like a little grass growing among the trash.”

Creating one of María Burundarena’s Insula pieces. Credit: Maria Burundarena

While Burundarena’s artwork contains coded messages about politics and the passage of time, it is also “a much more aestheticized version of reality,” she said.

“I am someone who finds it very difficult to stay in one place,” Burundarena said. “I like to move a lot, and I mainly work with things that I encounter in my daily life, such as during walks. The street really shapes my practice, so there is a part of my work that is about artificially recreating what I find naturally in the world.”

María Burundarena is known for her use of reflective materials and print media, such as in “Volverse Imagen – Becoming Retina.” Credit: Maria Burundarena

Burundarena was born in Paris and raised in Buenos Aires, where she worked in textile design, photography and with an art collective. But she said she didn’t feel comfortable calling herself an artist until she moved to Chicago in 2019 to pursue her master’s degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Chicago-based artist María Burundarena. Credit: As long as

There, Burundarena followed a program for fiber and material studies. She started teaching in the school’s contemporary practices department.

“I think that was the turning point where I thought, ‘Okay, being an artist is possible,’” she said. “Nowadays I call myself an artist, and that’s an important point in any artist’s career to recognize that.”

Burundarena was also named one of Newcity’s Breakout Artists of 2024. It’s rewarding to be recognized by fellow Chicago artists, she said.

“Because I got recognition from your community and from a super special magazine… I thought, ‘Okay, you’re doing things right,’” Burundarena said. “As artists, we apply for a lot of things all day long and we get so many rejections. … I’m a migrant, I’m not from Chicago, and somehow after five years I look around and I’m part of an art community.

María Burundarena’s 2023 solo show, Holograma de un Recuerdo/Hologram of a Memory. Credit: Eugene I-Peng Tang
María Burundarena’s 2023 solo show, Holograma de un Recuerdo/Hologram of a Memory. Credit: Eugene I-Peng Tang

When people enter the Burundarena world and see her art, she hopes they can, at least temporarily, disconnect from reality.

“Every time I exhibit my work, my true, honest wish is that people are transported to another world and forget whether they had a bad day or whether they forget something bad that happened in the world,” Burundarena said. “I really work to create an environment that is disruptive, different from what we see every day. … I think art should take us to another place.”

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