AwardFebruary 14, 2020
María José Arjona, Museo La Tertulia
Museo La Tertulia Museum announced María José Arjona as the winner of the first version of this museum’s award. The prestigious Colombian artist presented a large-scale project for the Main Hall in La Tertulia.
La Tertulia Museum Prize was created with the aim of offering recognition to a national artist. For the first selection phase, the institution’s board invited an outstanding panel of five experts that chose experienced and skilled creators, who in turn sent their proposals for an art project. The panel—composed by Lilly Scarpetta, collector and patron; María Paz Gaviria, director of ARTBO; Jaime Cerón, Arts deputy director of IDARTES; Claudia Hakim, director of Bogotá’s Museo de Arte Moderno (MAMBO); and Celia Sredni de Birbragher, director of Arte en Colombia / ArtNexus magazine—nominated artists Miler Lagos, María José Arjona, Nicolás Consuegra, Erika Diettes, and Nicolás Paris.
The second phase took place in December 2019. The jury members—Colombian artist Óscar Muñoz; Ana Sokoloff, a New York-based art consultant; and Victoria Noorthoorn, director of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Buenos Aires—chose María José Arjona’s project, entitled How to inhabit this space now?
The artist's proposal aims to rearticulate the critical and social function of “self-discovery” through space, time, and matter—with the body as the center of experience—in order to generate a collective event. It seeks to outline the concept of a museum beyond an architectural structure and propel it as a place of intersection: the body within a museographic space wthin a city. Arjona seeks to create a space for the body that simultaneously opens up to other disciplines relevant to the city of Cali.
The prize consists of: ten million Colombian pesos (almost 3,000 U.S. dollars); a forty-million peso scholarship (around 11,720 U.S. dollars) to produce the work; the exhibition of the piece in the Maritza Uribe de Urdinola Room, considered the most important space in this museum; a publication; the acceptance of one of her works in La Tertulia’s permanent collection; and two million pesos (approximately 5,856 U.S. dollars) for the nomination and presentation of her proposal.
Arjona’s exhibition, which will open to the public during the last semester of 2020, also includes the publication’s launch. With this initiative, La Tertulia Museum Prize seeks to be recognized as one of Colombia’s main artistic incentives.
Maria José Arjona is a performance artist based in Bogotá. Through her practice she has developed unique mediation tactics, whereby research and writing are transformed into experimental fields that explore and resignify the role of time, movement, matter, and space in relation to critical and indispensable questions. Inquiring as a form of movement but also as resistance to homogenization, has become the procedure favored by Arjona to seek and materialize interactions with others.
She has developed important works in artist residencies such as the LARA (Latin American Roaming Art) edition in Ecuador, Irregular Hexagon in Israel, TheaterWorks in Singapore, The Watermill Center in the U.S., and Tact in Colombia. Her numerous shows have centered mainly on solo performances, as well as projects presented at the Third Triennial of Guangzhou, China; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Germany; the Quadrilateral Biennial, Croatia; the Museo Madre, Italy; Irregular Hexagon, Israel; the Morocco Biennale; DOIT, United Kingdom; the 43rd Salón Nacional, Colombia; the Caixa Forum, Spain; Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Germany; FLORA ars + natura, Bogotá; Lucca Museum of Contemporary Art, Italy; Location One, New York; NC-Arte, Bogotá; Ballroom Marfa, Texas, Bass Museum of Art, Miami; and Bogotá’s Museo de Arte Moderno. Arjona also participated as a performer for the Marina Abramovic retrospective in MoMa, New York.
La Tertulia Museum Prize was created with the aim of offering recognition to a national artist. For the first selection phase, the institution’s board invited an outstanding panel of five experts that chose experienced and skilled creators, who in turn sent their proposals for an art project. The panel—composed by Lilly Scarpetta, collector and patron; María Paz Gaviria, director of ARTBO; Jaime Cerón, Arts deputy director of IDARTES; Claudia Hakim, director of Bogotá’s Museo de Arte Moderno (MAMBO); and Celia Sredni de Birbragher, director of Arte en Colombia / ArtNexus magazine—nominated artists Miler Lagos, María José Arjona, Nicolás Consuegra, Erika Diettes, and Nicolás Paris.
The second phase took place in December 2019. The jury members—Colombian artist Óscar Muñoz; Ana Sokoloff, a New York-based art consultant; and Victoria Noorthoorn, director of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Buenos Aires—chose María José Arjona’s project, entitled How to inhabit this space now?
The artist's proposal aims to rearticulate the critical and social function of “self-discovery” through space, time, and matter—with the body as the center of experience—in order to generate a collective event. It seeks to outline the concept of a museum beyond an architectural structure and propel it as a place of intersection: the body within a museographic space wthin a city. Arjona seeks to create a space for the body that simultaneously opens up to other disciplines relevant to the city of Cali.
The prize consists of: ten million Colombian pesos (almost 3,000 U.S. dollars); a forty-million peso scholarship (around 11,720 U.S. dollars) to produce the work; the exhibition of the piece in the Maritza Uribe de Urdinola Room, considered the most important space in this museum; a publication; the acceptance of one of her works in La Tertulia’s permanent collection; and two million pesos (approximately 5,856 U.S. dollars) for the nomination and presentation of her proposal.
Arjona’s exhibition, which will open to the public during the last semester of 2020, also includes the publication’s launch. With this initiative, La Tertulia Museum Prize seeks to be recognized as one of Colombia’s main artistic incentives.
Maria José Arjona is a performance artist based in Bogotá. Through her practice she has developed unique mediation tactics, whereby research and writing are transformed into experimental fields that explore and resignify the role of time, movement, matter, and space in relation to critical and indispensable questions. Inquiring as a form of movement but also as resistance to homogenization, has become the procedure favored by Arjona to seek and materialize interactions with others.
She has developed important works in artist residencies such as the LARA (Latin American Roaming Art) edition in Ecuador, Irregular Hexagon in Israel, TheaterWorks in Singapore, The Watermill Center in the U.S., and Tact in Colombia. Her numerous shows have centered mainly on solo performances, as well as projects presented at the Third Triennial of Guangzhou, China; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Germany; the Quadrilateral Biennial, Croatia; the Museo Madre, Italy; Irregular Hexagon, Israel; the Morocco Biennale; DOIT, United Kingdom; the 43rd Salón Nacional, Colombia; the Caixa Forum, Spain; Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Germany; FLORA ars + natura, Bogotá; Lucca Museum of Contemporary Art, Italy; Location One, New York; NC-Arte, Bogotá; Ballroom Marfa, Texas, Bass Museum of Art, Miami; and Bogotá’s Museo de Arte Moderno. Arjona also participated as a performer for the Marina Abramovic retrospective in MoMa, New York.
