Chicago Artists Coalition is pleased to announce Insula, a solo exhibition by 2024 Newcity Breakout Artist María Burundarena, curated by Vasia Rigou.

In Insula (Latin for “island”), María Burundarena invites the viewer into a world of discovery, seduction, and intrigue, transforming overlooked and abandoned Chicago landscapes into immersive, sensory experiences. Influenced by her ongoing exploration of surfaces and perception, Burundarena reimagines spaces like Northerly Island—where urban debris forms an unlikely oasis—as sites of hidden beauty and tranquility. Through photography and installation, she captures the ephemeral qualities of these often forgotten places, layering her work with a sense of memory and time.

Her installations aim to seduce and confuse, triggering surprise and curiosity. The French-born, Argentina-raised artist works across multiple mediums—photography, print, collage, and digital projection—to reassemble fragments of reality, pushing the viewer to question their relationship to what they see. Her use of vibrant color—neon pinks, intense blues and holographic greens—reflects her upbringing in a digital world of screens, where images are fluid, flexible, and unbound by traditional frames. Surfaces, for Burundarena, are more than just visual; they carry encrypted messages that demand closer inspection. She describes the tone of her work as a "raging RGB," a nod to both her bold use of color and her relentless creative process.

Insula creates a space where the boundaries between reality and imagination blur. Burundarena's fascination with the passage of time, memory, and broken surfaces is woven into each piece, offering the viewer a new way to engage with the city and the gallery itself. By integrating the architectural elements of the Chicago Artists Coalition space and using mirrors to reflect and expand it, she invites us to step inside her world—to be absorbed by the layers of meaning, light, and color, and surrender into a deeply personal, yet collective, experience.

— Vasia Rigou, Curator

María Burundarena, born in 1989 in Paris and raised in Buenos Aires, is a Chicago-based visual artist and educator. Her work spans textile design, photography, and large-scale installations using print media, light projection, and reflective materials. She has exhibited at ZAZ 10 Times Square, Chicago Athletic Association, Hyde Park Art Center, and the Cleve Carney Museum of Art, among others. In 2024, Burundarena was named one of Chicago's Breakout Artists and received the DCASE Individual Artists Program grant. She holds a BFA in Garment Design from La Universidad de Buenos Aires (FADU), where she also taught, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is currently a lecturer in the Contemporary Practices Department.
https://mariaburundarena.com/
@mariaburundarena

Greek-born Vasia Rigou is a writer, editor, and curator. She grew up to appreciate art after years of carefully planned, culture-filled travel itineraries and museum-hopping around Europe with her family. Much of her work, writing about visual art, culture, architecture and design, can be found at Newcity, Chicago’s leading culture publication, where she serves as editor. She also regularly contributes to the Chicago Reader and to international magazines OnOffice and ICON. By day, she’s the Writer and Copy Editor at the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) HQ. In her curatorial practice she explores identity, intimacy, and belonging. Her work can be found at rigouvasia.com.
https://rigouvasia.com/
@vasiarigou

Image: Courtesy of the artist, graphic design by Martin Azambuja