‘Bougainvillea is one of my favourite flowers. It reminds me of growing up in Colombia, where you can see its splendour everywhere in absurd abundance. One of the reasons I wanted to paint this flower was because of its “paper-like” quality: when I see them, they remind me of the paper I use to create my paintings.

When I imagine this village I am creating, I imagine warm weather, a breeze that carries the smell of the sea. A town where flowers are blooming everywhere, where gorgeous cascades of bougainvillea drift down the walls of homes. Where people sit and wait for the day to pass, where there are no hurries or time constraints, no need to be anywhere, just the need to be present.

That’s where the woman depicted in this painting is. She is sitting and contemplating her present. Her arms and legs are crossed and she seems pensive. The air, I imagine, is heavy, thick with humidity. The bougainvillea behind her is a riotous symbol of life, a life that is blooming, lush and wild, a life which is behind her.

This was the last piece I created for this exhibition. On reflection, I think of this painting as a manifestation of my own hopes and desires: a warm afternoon, a calm atmosphere, a day of contemplation, a day of silence and reflection. The months that have accompanied the making of the works for this show have been full of noise and fear. I would walk anxiously to the studio through the once busy streets of Brooklyn, now deserted, painting while I listened to the governor of New York’s daily briefings on the pandemic. The soundscape of these works was itself a collage: the grim tally of rising casualties and declining hospital beds and supplies, the daily applause for healthcare workers, the ubiquitous wail of ambulances and the ricochets of illegal fireworks, the chants and demands of protesters and the hum of police helicopters. It was a soundscape that recorded the collective gasp of a species in peril, as captured in the news from New York City, from Colombia, and from all over the world. These are paintings made while grieving, every day grieving. These are paintings made in a very specific historical moment, when the fragility of each individual’s plans and hopes and dreams were laid bare and made irrelevant in the face of the potential undoing of our civilization. This last piece was me trying to take a deep breath, trying to smell the sea, trying to cultivate the same hope, endurance, and adaptation that animate the figures of my work.’ – María Berrío