María José Crespo

artistic research - installation - sculpture - video

Growing up in the Bordertown of Tijuana has made me question the way I inhabit limits as a woman in unclear territories. These types of spaces reflect a bit of who I am: they are indecisive, yet they disavow any attempt to be controlled by way of disorientation, making evidence appear in the form of symptoms. I think of the territory as a body that carries with it the traces of experiences and memories; where symptoms are subjective, and things speak to me through textures, sounds, or gestures that are not immediately legible. These observations reveal the way these spaces have been bounded, by producing subjectivities in bodies as materialities found in different corners and ditches of these zones.

  • Portfolio
  • Activities
  • Awarded
  • Contact

    • The gateway as a point of encounter

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 29-07-2023 t/m 20-08-2023
    • In collaboration with: Madeleine Ruggi
    • Location: puntWG, Amsterdam
    • 'The gateway as a point of encounter', a collaborative exhibition of new sculpture, video, print, installation and sound from artists María José Crespo and Madeleine Ruggi, reflects upon the artists' firsthand bodily encounters with the massive Port of Amsterdam, a vast transport hub at the service of mass commodity demand. Supported by AFK
    • https://puntwg.nl/the-gateway-as-a-point-of-encounter

    Goethe Investigating

    Residencies / exchange

    • 01-05-2023 t/m 15-07-2023
    • Location: Goethe Institute, Rotterdam
    • María José Crespo will research informal ways of communication at the border between México and the United States in the context of the Mexican Revolution Avisadores were sending avisos with mirrors flickering a blinding flashlight. Her research will explore the untold female perspective of the Avisadores and how the avisos - along with other informal gestures -, allowed acts of autonomy in an environment of industrial excess.
    • https://www.goethe.de/ins/nl/nl/kul/gin/investigating-female-flickers-.html

    Country of Milk and Honey

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 25-02-2023 t/m 28-05-2023
    • In collaboration with: Archivo Familiar Rio Colorado / Planta Libre Espacio Experimental
    • Venue: MexiCali Biennial, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside
    • The Colorado River Family Archive is a project that explores the relationships between people, ecosystems, settlements, and water in Mexicali – the delta region of the Colorado River. In this chapter we think about the notions of scarcity and abundance; where do they come from; how the measures that operate from them work and for whose benefit. Extractive relations are still valid in our way of commodifying the territory and looking at the landscape, but there are also fissures in those stories;
    • https://riversideartmuseum.org/exhibits/the-land-of-milk-honey/

    Water axis displacement

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 24-02-2023 t/m 12-03-2023
    • Location: OnCurating, Zurich
    • 'Water as displacement' is the third chapter in 'stories of water. About its chapters, the program explores the multifaceted formal qualities of water, the complex symbiotic entanglements in which humans and water coexist, as well as the politics of water in our current globalized reality. Throughout this third chapter, we are looking into the politics of water, borders, expropriation and self-governance.
    • https://oncurating-space.org/chapter-iii-water-as-displacement/

    Artpace

    Residencies / exchange

    • 26-09-2022 t/m 21-11-2022
    • Location: San Antonio, Texas
    • María José Crespo has created an environment that layers human presence, land and water politics, and an ever-changing territory into a border poem. Specifically, her exhibition, Flaws in negotiation with non-cohesive sand, references the US – Mexico border and how it functions and adapts through time, space and materiality.
    • https://artpace.org/exhibitions/flaws-in-negotiation-with-non-cohesive-sand/

    European Alliance of Academies

    Residencies / exchange

    • 01-01-2022 t/m 30-04-2022
    • Location: Akademie der Künste, Berlin
    • LOOM Interweaving the Arts in Europe is a project of the European Alliance of Academies. This transnational alliance of currently 68 art academies and cultural institutions from all over Europe is united by the will to act in solidarity against nationalistic appropriations in art and culture and to champion the freedom of art – an indispensable element in a functioning democracy, pivotal for social cohesion in Europe
    • https://loom.allianceofacademies.eu/project/govern-yourself-accordingly/

    Witnessing as a method of getting through gateways

    Performance

    • 15-07-2022 t/m 15-07-2022
    • In collaboration with: Madeleine Ruggi
    • Location: Art Institute Melly, Rotterdam
    • Within the context of the Piet Zwart Institute MFA graduation 2022, Madeleine Ruggi and María José Crespo draw together their separate processing of information within their artistic research by sharing ideas and working methodologies into an audiovisual performance presentation. The presentation will navigate different ways of collecting information, and the translation of found materials as research.
    • https://www.kunstinstituutmelly.nl/en/engage/1725-performance-graduation-programs-piet-zwart-master-of-fine-art

    This is reality and it was but a chat away

    Exhibition / presentation

    XXIII Bienal Plastica de Baja California

    Exhibition / presentation

    Todo menos un fantasma

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 14-03-2019 t/m 14-04-2019
    • In collaboration with: PFC: Programa de fotografía contemporánea
    • Location: Centro de la imagen, Ciudad de Mexico
    • The exhibition brings together and intersperses the results of two important complementary training programs in photography and visual arts in the country: on the one hand, the Contemporary Photography Program (PFC, 2018), under the tutelage of Javier Ramírez Limón, with support from the BBVA Bancomer Foundation at the Tijuana Cultural Center.

    Acknowledgments

      Scholarship

    • Jumex Foundation Grant for postgraduate studies. Mexico City. 2020

    • 2022
      Scholarship

    • FONCA Jóvenes Creadores (Alternative media installation)

    • 2020
      Scholarship

    • Van Beek Donner Foundation Grant for postgraduate studies. Rotterdam, Netherlands.

    • 2020
      Scholarship

    • FONDARTE BC Fund for supporting independent artistic and cultural activities in Baja California. Ministry of Culture of Baja California. Mexico.

    • 2020
      Scholarship

    • PECDA Jóvenes Creadores (Alternative media installation) State program for artistic development of Baja California. Ministry of Culture of Baja California. Mexico.

    • 2019
      Scholarship

    • FONCA Jóvenes Creadores (Alternative media installation) Young Artists Grant, National Endowment of Arts and Culture of Mexico.

    • 2018
      Scholarship

    • Contemporary Photography Program (PFC) BBVA BANCOMER Foundation and Centro Cultural Tijuana. Tijuana BC, Mexico.

    • 2018
      Scholarship

    • APROART Art Production Grant. Centro Cultural Tijuana. Tijuana, BC, Mexico.

    • 2016
      Pricing

    • XXIII Bienal Plastica de Baja California. Acquisition award. Mexico.

    • 2022
      Collection

    • Elias + Fontes

    • 2016, Baja California, Mexico.