Maria Elvira
Escallon

Born in London; lives and works in Bogotá.

Colombian sculptor, installation artist, and photographer, her work is characterized by long-duration research and extended processes. She frequently carries out ephemeral sculptural actions or interventions in inaccessible places, which she then documents in photography or video. Other times, she installs devices to signal or create a special condition of observation. The exhibition resources she turns to arise from dreams, intuitions, or expanded processes. Her work develops around themes such as time, memory, ruin, and the vulnerability of monuments. Likewise, her reflection on the culture-nature relationship is central. Her most recent works are directed toward emphasizing the bond between human beings and vegetal beings.

Since 1990 her work has been shown in solo and retrospective exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia of the Banco de la República (2024–2025), the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (2019), and the Museo Nacional de Colombia (2014), among others, and she has received numerous recognitions, including the Premio Nacional de Fotografía 2024, the Premio Luis Caballero (III Edition), the National Grant for Individual Creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1995, 2006, and 2014, First Prize at the Salón Regional de Artistas de Bogotá in 1997, and the IDCT Heritage Grant in 2007.

Her work has been part of international exhibitions such as the X Havana Biennial and the VIII Mercosur Biennial (2011), the I Bienal Internacional de Antioquia y Medellín, the Bienal Internacional de Bogotá, Once more with feeling: Contemporary Photography from Colombia at the Photographers Gallery, London, and the First Berlin Photography Festival. It is held in collections including the Banco de la República, the Museo Nacional de Colombia, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, the Fonds national d'art contemporain (FNAC), France, the Cisneros Fontanals Foundation, the Art Gallery of South West Sydney, the LPS Collection of Latin American Photography (Stanislas and Leticia Poniatowski), the Latin American Art Collection of the University of Essex, England, the Jorge Pérez Collection, and private collections.