Aichi Triennale 2025: A Time Between Ashes and Roses, Period:September 13 to November 30, 2025, 79 days, Venues: Aichi Arts Center, Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, Seto CityAichi Triennale 2025: A Time Between Ashes and Roses, Period:September 13 to November 30, 2025, 79 days, Venues: Aichi Arts Center, Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, Seto City

What’s On

Marilyn Boror Bor

  • Contemporary Art
  • Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum

Exhibition

  • Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2025
  • Marilyn Boror Bor, El agua se nos hizo concreto - de la Serie: Nos quitaron la montaña, nos dieron cemento (Water became concrete, from the series “Our mountain has been taken, and cement was brought in”), 2023/2025
  • ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee
  • Photo: Ito Tetsuo
Description
El agua se nos hizo concreto - de la Serie: Nos quitaron la montaña, nos dieron cemento (Our mountain has been taken, and cement was brought in)

Maya-Kaqchikel artist Marilyn Boror Bor’s practice explores themes of Indigenous identity and colonialism, challenging historical narratives of the Americas. Her works that re-examine sidelined Indigenous history convey messages relevant to people living in today’s world.

The ceramic works that Boror Bor exhibits at Aichi Triennale 2025 are based on vessels that are a familiar part of Indigenous life, but are filled with concrete. The concrete makes them unusable for their original purpose, implicitly portraying the damage suffered by Indigenous communities at the hands of the dominant classes. They recall the way that construction of a cement plant in her hometown of San Juan Sacatepéquez disrupted the water supply for local communities. The concrete flowing out of these vessels changes into clay as it approaches the floor, creating an association with the clay portraits of Indigenous people at the bottom of the showcase. The Indigenous societies of Mesoamerica were invaded and persecuted during the colonialization process, and their existence has been kept almost invisible during most of the modern period. Boror Bor dedicates these portraits to the generations of women who protected the land and passed down their ancestors’ knowledge of nature and life despite those circumstances.

Venue

Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum
Main Gallery

Profile

  • Born 1984 in San Juan Sacatepéquez, Guatemala. Based in Guatemala, Guatemala.

Marilyn Boror Bor is a Maya-Kaqchikel artist, independent curator, art professor, and cultural manager. She has a degree in art from the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, recognized for its broad handling of materials and a socially engaged artistic practice. She explores themes of Indigenous identity, historical memory, colonialism, and resistance. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Boror’s work has been exhibited in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panamá, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentine, Barbados, Brazil, Ecuador, United States, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Malaysia, and UK. Her work has been selected as part of Phaidon Art Next Generation, over 100 of the most innovative and interesting contemporary artists working in all media worldwide.

Selected exhibitions
2024
Fugas de lo nuestro. Visualidades indigenas de sur a norte, Museo de la solidaridad Salvador Allende (Santiago, Chile)
2024
Musa. Perspectivas femeninas en las Colecciones del MAMM y MAC Panamá, Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellin (Colombia)
2023
35th Bienal de São Paulo: choreographies of the impossible (Brazil)
2023
XXIII Paiz Art Biennial: I drank words submerged in dreams (Guatemala)
2022
COMMUNICATING VESSELS. Collection 1881–2021, Museo Nacional Centro de ArteReina Sofia (Madrid, Spain)
  • “They took the mountains, gave us back concrete.” 2022