In person / Performance / Dyeing
Fuerte Quebracho is a site-specific installation at an abandoned structure at Fort Tilden, a former U.S. military site on the Atlantic coast. It uses deadstock silk dyed with quebracho fuerte, a tree native to the Gran Chaco region in South America. Activation in collaboration with performance laboratory gmtc featuring a sound performance by sound artist Isaac Silber and a quebracho water distribution by Fragmentario.
María-Elena Pombo is a Venezuelan artist and researcher based in NYC. Her work is part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been exhibited at Somerset House (London), Mana Contemporary (Jersey City), Bronx Museum of the Arts (NYC), Yamamoto-Seika (Osaka), Fabbrica del Vapore (Milan), Zona Maco (México City), and more.
Pombo is artist in residence at Smack Mellon’s Artist Studio Program. She has participated in residencies and fellowships at Yaddo, Wave Hill, LMCC, the Bronx Museum, and NEW INC, The New Museum’s cultural incubator.
She won the 2021 London Design Biennale’s Theme Medal, and has received grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, Queens Council on the Arts, and more.
Pombo’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Slowdown, Metal Magazine, i-D, Vogue, Forbes, and the book ‘True Colors: World Masters of Natural Dyes”.
She is faculty at Parsons School of Design, teaching and developing curriculum for studio classes with a focus on research and experimentation. Pombo was instructor at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden where she designed and taught classes on natural dyes through a decolonial and non-extractivist lens.