Miriam Londoño

I was born in Medellin, Colombia.
In 1978 I graduated with a degree in Fine Arts at the University of Antioquia in Medellin and then I travelled to Italy, where I studied at the Arts Academy in Florence. Two years later I attended Mario Palaggi's Workshop, in Lucca, where I trained in ancient and Renaissance painting techniques. After returning to Medellín, I became a Lecturer in Arts at the National University's Faculty of Architecture.

My passion for papermaking started in Buenos Aires, and flourished as I lived in Poland for two years and in Thailand, for five years, two countries where I was able to learn traditional papermaking techniques from local masters and to experiment with a variety of native plants and other materials.

I have participated in handmade paper workshops taught by Ricardo Crivelli (Buenos Aires), the Carriage House of Paper (Boston, Massachussets; and Supan Pronsep (Thailand). In Bangkok, I took part in several exhibitions and taught a great deal of papermaking workshops myself.

My work has been shown in Colombia, the Netherlands, Argentine, Poland, South Korea, Rumania, Austria and England.

During the past years I have concentrated on working with language and using written texts as visual objects. The duality created when words themselves are transformed into paper, instead of just being written out on paper, is what most interests me. Somewhat like in poetry, using this technique I find that what is not said is also told,and that the gaps between letters become significant, since in an indirect fashion, they reflect the presence of a support no longer visible. Words here are not just supported on paper: they are paper. Support and contents become the same thing.

I am intensely interested in personal testimonies, first-hand experiences, and memories salvaged or compiled after harrowing events, whether they are echoes of individuals or of collective experiences that have arisen in singular surroundings (such as prison cells, convents, old people's
homes etc.).

CV Miriam Londoño>>