Ana María Caballero is a first-generation Colombian-American poet and artist. Her work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil from romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue. She’s the recipient of the Beverly International Prize, Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, a Future Arts Writer Award and a Sevens Foundation Grant. Recognized as a leading voice in contemporary digital poetry, she’s been nominated for a MAXXI BVLGARI Prize in the Digital Sector, shortlisted for a Lumen Prize and been a finalist for the both Vassar Miller and Academy of American Poetry Prizes. Her work has been widely published and exhibited internationally in museums, galleries and public spaces.
Paperwork
Paperwork, released in partnership with Bright Moments, is a performance-based, long-form generative AI collection of digital paper sculptures carved from individual emotional responses to the spoken-word poetry of Ana María Caballero. Throughout 2023, Caballero performed her poems in numerous venues across the world, inviting audience members to write down one word in response to her verse on sheets of paper. She gathered these slips of paper—these distilled, private moments of connection to her readings—and used each word to actuate Paperwork’s compositions, honoring paper’s haptic eloquence and materializing lived experiences via the digital form.
Being Borges
Being Borges is a poetic and (post)photographic recasting of Jorge Luis Borges and Margarita Guerrero’s Book of Imaginary Beings. Presented in partnership with Berlin gallery Office Impart and London-based Verse Works, this ongoing series begs the question: what is at stake when language becomes literal via the visual?
artifacts
Ways To Misspell Obsidian
WAYS TO MISSPELL OBSIDIAN is a collection of spoken-word poems by Ana María Caballero that investigates and celebrates the storytelling potential of long-form poetry. Following the passing of a very close friend, Caballero composed JUAN, a eulogy-in-verse. This text serves as both precursor and companion to “Ways to Misspell Obsidian,” a lyric essay written years later in which details of Juan’s passing are braided into the story of the intoxication of Caballero’s young son with nail polish remover.
Juan
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Once
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Fathomless
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