Bio

Maria del Pilar Arrieta Borgo  born 1978  in Lima, Perú is a latino artist based in United States. Arrieta creates paintings that combines the figurative and abstract form with the overlap of block colors used as patterns in the negative space to include references to ancient Pre-Columbian art. Her paintings have been included in various galleries and museums exhibitions in Indiana, the Fort wayne Museum of Art,  Purdue University of Fort Wayne Visual Arts Gallery and the Garret Museum of Art. She participated in group exhibitions in Tennessee and  Massachusetts. In addition, Arrieta was the recipient of the Donna A. Jesse Arts (2020), Lola Martinez Scholarship (2020), and the Auer Fine Arts (2020-2019) and she was honored with the first-place award in the Fifth National Poster Contest from Asociación Pro-Derechos Humanos in Lima, Perú (1997). Arrieta obtained her bachelor’s degree in fine arts with a concentration in painting and a minor in art history in 2021 from Indiana University of Fort Wayne and currently  is a MFA candidate at the University of Florida College of the Arts in Studio Painting.

In my paintings I explore symbolic culture as an inherent and evolving tradition in identity. My practice begins with the  intersection of the figurative and geometric abstraction forms. The figures are intertwined with overlapped patterns and shapes, shifting into a new order that navigates between the physical world and an imagined space. Exploring the narratives, I create a space that carries fragments of culture, interwoven with the figurative to evoke themes of tradition, memory and identity. The figures depicted as portraits or  silhouettes, capture gestural expressions that are inspired by life drawing studies, that reflect the uniqueness of human presence within tradition. The pattern elements are inspired by my heritage, rendering symbols like the pre-Columbian art from the coast or highlands from Peru to endorse some values that inherits as a form of identity, as we navigate and survive the diaspora and throughout life experiences. Through these imagery forces I want to create a language that responds to the absence of memories, resisting symbolic culture and imagining that we can still carry tradition forward into our present.