Stop & Chat: María Berrío: Songlines

María Berrío: Songlines is on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and if you want a bit more to chew on than just walking through, the museum is running a Stop & Chat session for it. It's an informal drop-in hour where you hang out with a Mia guide who helps unpick the narratives hidden inside the show. The guide does the heavy lifting, so you can just show up and listen rather than trying to figure it all out on your own.

Berrío is a Colombian artist born in 1982 and active in the US, and her process is something you can actually see if you look closely. She builds these monumental scenes by layering hand-cut Japanese paper onto canvas, constructing the images almost entirely piece by piece with only rare areas of painting. Figures and forms emerge through that meticulous layering, and the compositions shift between precision and abstraction. Songlines brings together work from the past decade, tracing how she draws on literature, music, and global histories to create symbolic, open-ended narratives.

The exhibition was organized by Mia and the San José Museum of Art, and it's on a national tour—it'll head 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 a catalogue that came out with texts by Berrío and Katherine Brodbeck, plus an interview by Valéria Piccoli.

The Stop & Chat runs from 11 AM to 12 PM, starting Saturday, October 24, and continuing through Friday, November 20, with no session on Monday, November 16. You'll find it in Galleries 275 and 276 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 Third Avenue South, and it's free.