Kenia Almaraz Murillo

Waddington Custot is pleased to announce global representation of Kenia Almaraz Murillo. 

Born in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia in 1994, Kenia Almaraz Murillo creates contemporary wall-mounted sculptures that skilfully explore themes such as familial legacy, diasporic identity and Andean cosmovision. 

Kenia’s complex works, hand woven in her Paris studio, integrate weavings in indigenous South American yarns with urban objects such as car bumpers and motorbike headlamps which are salvaged from Parisian scrapyards, and illuminated with neon LED lights. Recent series have incorporated the embroidered panels of exuberant Bolivian carnival costumes as well as ritual items like small bags of corn, coca leaves, quinoa and protective amulets, in a seamless fusion of the natural and artificial. 

Accompanied by an older sister, Kenia moved from Bolivia to Paris at the age of 11 and worked her way through the French education system, culminating with studies at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. In parallel with her tuition, from 2015 to 2020 Kenia learned basse-lisse weaving under the mentorship of legendary French textile artist Simone Prouvé. This Parisian education informs Kenia’s work with the philosophical and cultural contexts of the Western aesthetic tradition; blended with Andean cosmology, Kenia and her artistic practice embody a true diasporic identity.

Kenia's first solo exhibition with Waddington Custot will open in November 2024.