Mariel Carranza

Mariel Carranza was born and raised in Perú and came to Los Angeles, California in 1980. As an immigrant who regularly exhibits in Los Angeles, nationally and internationally, the performances Carranza makes underscore the fractured and complicated identities and structural complexities in the politics of the body, location, language and multiple histories. Carranza is committed to finding ways to make her work more accessible to broader non-traditional art-seeking audiences. Her artistic goals and practice rely on creating performances that complicate concepts of time and space. Her signature work involves temporary social sculpture coupled with elements of highly intensive duration, endurance and repetition. These methods transform both the living matter in the work and the witnesses and spectators of the work in both actual (live) and flexible (post-performance) time. As a deaf artist, performance has enabled her to treat her body as an antenna and to utilize this form as a vector exposing the ways language becomes malleable in the hands of those who embody communication when a mastery of spoken language is elusive or available.

This bio/description was originally published in 2021 and updated in 2021. For more current information, please refer to the award recipient's website (if provided).