Stop & Chat: María Berrío: Songlines

María Berrío: Songlines is on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and on Tuesday, October 20, the museum is hosting a Stop & Chat session around it. It's an informal drop-in, so you can just swing by and spend a little time with a Mia guide unraveling the narratives hidden inside Berrío's monumental compositions. The session runs at 11 AM in Galleries 275 and 276, and it's free.

Berrío is a Colombian artist, born in 1982 and active in the United States, and her process is as much a part of the work as the images themselves. She builds her scenes by layering hand-cut Japanese paper onto canvas, constructing each image piece by piece with only rare areas of painting. Figures and forms emerge through that meticulous layering, creating dense compositions that shift between precision and abstraction. Her work draws on literature, music, and global histories to build symbolic, open-ended narratives—the kind of things that give you plenty to chew on when you're standing in front of them.

Songlines is a traveling show organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the San José Museum of Art. After its time here, it'll move to the San José Museum of Art from February 12 to July 12, 2027, and then to the Wichita Art Museum from August 14, 2027, to January 2, 2028, with support from Hauser & Wirth and Victoria Miro. There's also an accompanying catalogue that includes texts by Berrío herself, Katherine Brodbeck, and co-curators Lauren Schell Dickens and Leslie Ureña, along with an interview by Valéria Piccoli.

If you've been meaning to see the exhibition but weren't sure where to start, the Stop & Chat is a good way in. It's at 11 AM on Tuesday, October 20, in Galleries 275 and 276 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 Third Avenue South, and it's free.