María-Elena Pombo is a Venezuelan artist and researcher based in NYC.

She works through open-ended and interconnected projects that investigate real and speculative pasts, presents, and futures through installations, sculptures, videos, and moments that play with site-specificity, ephemerality, and participation.

She is interested in untangling notions of territory by centering Earth-matter holding historical and contemporary importance across different cultures and time. From avocado-seeds, mollusk-shells, petroleum and algae, gathered through collaborations that engage heterogeneous publics into co-creating alternative forms of knowledge. She transforms these materials beyond recognition to seek new ways to understand the world.

Her work is part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been exhibited at Somerset House (London), Bronx Museum of the Arts (NYC), Yamamoto-Seika (Osaka), Fabbrica del Vapore (Milan), and more. She has participated in residencies and fellowships at Yaddo, Wave Hill, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Bronx Museum, and NEW INC, The New Museum’s cultural incubator. She won the 2021 London Design Biennale’s Theme Medal, and has received grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Brooklyn Arts Council. Pombo’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Slowdown, Metal, i-D, and Vogue.