Mariana Castillo Deball: Finding Oneself Outside

Working in sculpture, printmaking, photography, and installation, Mariana Castillo Deball (b. 1975, Mexico City, Mexico) considers the ways historical artifacts and material culture are recorded, appropriated, and circulated. In a number of her past works, the artist has shed light on pre-Hispanic and early colonial indigenous narratives to consider their legacies within Mexican identity as well as the transformations engendered by colonial encounters. 

Through both artistic and academic research, Castillo Deball examines how knowledge and cultural heritage are produced, organized, and authenticated through diverse modes of storytelling, collecting, and classification. Castillo Deball’s process also emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration, engaging archaeologists, novelists, ethnographers, historians, mathematicians, physicists, biologists, and paleontologists in her interrogations of subjects that span sciences and cultural histories.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.