BIOGRAPHY
María Dusamp is a Colombian sculptor based in New York whose work explores memory, resilience, and the stories that can only be told through form. After earning her BFA with Distinction from Pratt Institute and MFA from the School of Visual Arts, she has exhibited at venues including Wassaic Project, Collar Works, and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center. Her work has been featured in Art Zealous, Dear Artists Project, and Quiet Lunch, among other platforms. Dusamp extends her practice through teaching workshops at institutions like Howie The Harp Community Access and curatorial projects at Starta Arta and Equity Gallery, fostering artistic dialogue within her community.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Some learn early an unutterable experience. Some stories can only be told through the language of form—through clay and hollows that hold what cannot be spoken. Whether drawn from literature or lived experience, I give these narratives physical shape as figures, abstract reliefs, and ribbons.
Not everyone grew up in a happy home. Others had to grow up sooner than others, without knowing and to no choice of their own. I sculpt a young girl I've nicknamed Bebop. She is about innocence—the strength and vulnerabilities of her own innocence. Alone, she is vulnerable and small, holding a butter knife without understanding. But in numbers she is strong. Her innocence will arrive.
Growing up in Bogotá, stray dogs were everywhere—always accompanied by a desire to befriend them while knowing they might bite. I sculpt these dogs too, blurring predation and intimacy. This tension mirrors trauma: wanting to be loved only to mistake that love for damaging behavior.
My reliefs explore other territories where memory lives—Shakespeare's Ophelia examining her internal state, the place where she died, and the way my inherited hair echoes tangled bodies of water. These organic forms become topographies of feeling, surfaces that breathe despite their stillness.
My ribbons unfurl as timelines of transformation, marking pivotal junctures. With micro poems inlaid in wood letters, they trace rituals of cleanliness, my fluctuating relationship to astrology, and the cyclical nature of belief and doubt—each mapping a different way of enduring.
I think often of my grandmother's hands arranging flowers, of the way women in my family have always shaped material to hold what cannot be spoken. Through mold making and casting, I enable mistakes to occur as an echo to life's mishaps. These works do not parade their stories but offer silence as a means to start a conversation. I strive to provide that place where you can feel their presence and hope to know them better.
Image Courtesy of Alexander Si