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, 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 installations have been exhibited in venues such as the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Milton Academy, Installation Space, Gallery 360 at Northeastern University, Smack Mellon, Fitchburg Art Museum, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston Children’s Museum and the Dorchester Art Project. Her projects also include several large-scale 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, The Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Mass Cultural Council, 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 currently a Brother Thomas Fellow (2021-2022) of The Boston Foundation, and has previously been awarded an Earthwatch Communications Fellowship (2018) and the grand prize at the Creative Climate Awards (2017). In 2019 she was honored by WBUR’s The ARTery as one of “The ARTery 25”, a celebration of 25 millennials of color impacting Boston’s arts and culture scene.
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 has taught courses in art theory and media production in a variety of contexts, from universities to children’s museums. Rodriguez is also an independent curator, with exhibitions such as “Awaken: Conjuring Our Tomorrow” featuring Latina artists focusing on climate justice issues in their practice on view at Salem State University in 2020. She participates in artist collectives such as the CreateWell Collective Leadership Alumni Board and the Boston LGBTQIA+ Artist Alliance (BLAA).
Rodriguez is an alumni of the Boston Center for the Arts Studios Program and she has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, the Ragdale Foundation, the Dorchester Art Project (inaugural resident), Wassaic Project, Arts Letters & Numbers, and The Studios at MASS MoCA. She has her studio at Midway Artist Studios.
(Photo by Tory Corless of Allison Maria Rodriguez in her video installation “Wish You Were Here: Greetings from the Galápagos” at The Dorchester Art Project, 2018)