Maracaibo
The city where I was born and trained in art and design. Venezuela’s oil-producing landscape enters my material history through painting, found pages, and the migration of a body between countries.
Biography & practice
Body, language,
and matter.
Marco Caridad (b. 1985, Maracaibo, Venezuela) is a Venezuelan-American interdisciplinary artist based between Miami and Vieques, Puerto Rico.
His practice brings together video performance, painting, printmaking, assemblage, and participatory work. Across these forms, books, cut canvas, thread, and the body make visible how words and social expectations are handled, imposed, and refused.
Born in Maracaibo and working between Miami and Vieques, he carries the material and social histories of these places into a practice shaped by migration. His work has been presented at the Allentown Art Museum, the Adrienne Arsht Center, and the Wolfsonian–FIU. He is the founder and director of Biolumina Artist Residency in Vieques. From 2022 to 2026, he served as Artistic Director of Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA).
Artist statement
I make work where a body meets the terms used to name it. A found book can become a suspended body; a cut canvas can fold, hang, or give way.
My early work on masculinity and softness continues in projects where language is handled, imposed, altered, or refused. A gesture may begin in my body and pass into an object; in participatory work, other people help write the labels attached to the artist. Video performance lets these pressures unfold through action, while its props can remain as assemblages.
Born in Maracaibo and working between Miami and Vieques, I attend to the histories carried by these places. In Vieques, my relationship to the island also grows through Biolumina Artist Residency and sustained exchange with artists and community. Ceramic work is an emerging studio inquiry and is not yet represented here as a completed work.
Place & material
Maracaibo / Miami / ViequesVieques
The island’s history of U.S. Navy use, its continuing colonial condition, and repeated hurricane recovery shape the place where I now live and work. I approach these realities through lived relationship and cultural exchange, not as scenery.
These histories do not turn each material into a symbol. They shape the conditions under which books are kept or removed, cloth is cut or held, and bodies move through shared space.
Formal affinities & the work’s own terms
The cut canvas enters a longer history of painting’s rupture; text in thread carries its own histories across textile, feminist, and Latin American practices. In my work, the cut is also a piece of cloth that bends, hangs, and can be held. Text becomes a found page or a stitched surface; labels are placed by participants in a shared encounter. The distinction lies in how these forms connect the body, action, object, and audience.
Selected curriculum vitae
Full CV PDF ↓Solo exhibitions
2024
A Particularly Vicious Tongue, Mundo Arte Gallery, Miami. Curated by Fernando Fernández.
2022
Sin Estereotipos, Centro de Bellas Artes de Maracaibo, Venezuela. Curated by Yi Chin Hsieh.
2021
Sans Stereotypes, MIFA, Miami. Curated by Yi Chin Hsieh.
Solo projects & two-person exhibitions
2025
Identity, solo project within Liminal Reality. MIFA, Miami. Curated by Félix Suazo.
2025
In The Mess, We Find Ourselves, with Stefania Urist. Uncool Gallery, Brooklyn. Curated by Carolina Paz.
Selected group exhibitions
2025
XI International Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art. MIFA, Miami.
2024
Allegories of the Real and the Supernatural. MoCAA, Kendall.
2022
TAKE THIS. TAKE ME. Doral Contemporary Art Museum, Miami.
2021
Gift Shop. Wolfsonian–FIU, Miami.
Screenings
2025
Italia Media Art Festival, Rome. Official Selection.
Cyprus Art Week, Pissouri. Official Selection.
Open Signal, Luminaria Contemporary Arts Festival, San Antonio.
2024
Miami New Media Festival, Miami. Official Selection.
Video Flux: Performance in Video Art, Miami Art Society.
Residencies & fellowships
2025
El Patio de Mi Casa Foundation / LVACA, Allentown Art Museum. Residency and grant.
2022–2025
Knight Foundation Art + Research Center fellowships, ICA Miami.
2023
Loop Art Critique Fellowship, MUD Foundation, Miami.
Miami Paper and Printing Museum. Residency.
Selected talks & participatory presentations
2025
Project My Label, artist talk and participatory activation. Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania.
2025
La Etiqueta Boricua, artist talk and participatory workshop. Museo de Arte de Bayamón, Puerto Rico.
2025
Can Art Change the City?, artist talk. Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture, Barcelona, Spain.
Education
2016
M.A. Design and Media Management, Miami International University of Art & Design.
2008
B.A. Graphic Design, University of Zulia, Maracaibo.
2003
Associate Degree in Fine Arts, Escuela de Artes Plásticas Neptalí Rincón, Maracaibo.
Institutional practice
2025–
Founder & Director, Biolumina Artist Residency, Vieques, Puerto Rico.
2022–2026
Former Artistic Director & Curator, Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA), Miami.