Biography
Allison Maria Rodriguez (she/her) is a first-generation Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist working predominately in video installation. She creates immersive experiential spaces that challenge conventional ways of knowing and understanding the world. Her work focuses extensively on climate change, species extinction and the interconnectivity of existence. Through video, digital animation, photography, drawing, performance, sculpture, collage and installation, Rodriguez merges and blends mediums to create new pictorial spaces for aesthetic, emotional and conceptual exploration. She uses art to communicate beyond language – to open up a space of possibility for the viewer to encounter alternative ways of connecting to the emotional realities of others.
Rodriguez’s work has been exhibited internationally, throughout the country and extensively in the New England area, in both traditional and non-traditional art spaces. Her immersive and/or large-scale installations have been exhibited in venues such as the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Digital Arts Studios (Northern Ireland), Montserrat Gallery, Smack Mellon, Fitchburg Art Museum, Gallery 360 at Northeastern University, Emerson Contemporary, Milton Academy, Installation Space, Boston Cyberarts Gallery, Blockfort Gallery, Spoke Gallery, 13Forest Gallery, Fountain Street Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston Children’s Museum, and Dorchester Art Project, among others. Her projects also include several public art video installations commissioned by organizations such as Illuminus Boston, Boston Cyberarts, the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, and the Jewish Arts Collaborative.
Her work has been supported by grants from The Boston Foundation, Mass Cultural Council, The Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Red Bull Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, CreateWell Fund, Boston Cultural Council, Arlington Cultural Council, Archie D. & Bertha H. Walker Foundation and Assets for Artists. Rodriguez is a Brother Thomas Fellow (2021) of The Boston Foundation, and has also been awarded an Earthwatch Communications Fellowship (2018) and the grand prize at the Creative Climate Awards (2017). In 2019 she was recognized by WBUR’s The ARTery as one of “The ARTery 25”, an inaugural celebration of 25 creatives of color impacting Boston’s arts and culture scene.
Rodriguez is currently the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Biology of Trauma Initiative at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She was also honored as the 2023 International Guest Artist-in-Residence at Digital Arts Studios in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Previously she has been a resident at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre (Manitoba), the Ragdale Foundation, the Dorchester Art Project (inaugural resident), Wassaic Project, Arts Letters & Numbers, and The Studios at MASS MoCA. Rodriguez received her MFA from Tufts University/The School of the Museum of Fine Arts and holds a BA in Language, Literature and Culture from Antioch College in OH, obtained also through study at Oxford University in England and Kyoto Seika University in Japan. She is also an independent curator and arts educator – she has taught courses in art theory and media production in a variety of contexts. Rodriguez has her studio at Midway Artist Studios in Boston, MA.
(Photo by Stewart Clements of Allison Maria Rodriguez in her video installation “Wish You Were Here: Greetings from the Galápagos” at Boston Children’s Museum, 2018)