Marisol Villela Balderrama

Marisol researches the untold travels of art and artists between East Asia and Latin America in the postwar era. Before joining the program at Pitt, Marisol completed a four-year MA program at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where her thesis documented the visits of Mexican artists to China in the 1950s and the touring of the Mexican National Front of Plastic Arts exhibition in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in 1956. This research was a crucial contribution to the exhibition Winds from Fusang: Mexico and China in the Twentieth Century, at the USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, and the Museo Mural Diego Rivera, Mexico City. 

Currently, Marisol examines Chilean artist José Venturelli’s mural and print production in China, Chile, and Cuba and the cultural bridges he helped build during the 1950s–70s across what was then known as the Third World. Marisol’s engagement with public art expands to the present. She collaborates in interdisciplinary projects that seek to connect academia at large, with a particular interest in emerging US Latinx communities. She is also a collaborator of the Hemispheric Conversations: Urban Art Program (HCUAP). She has taught at the Wuhan University and the Tecnológico de Monterrey and has research and curatorial experience at the MoMA and the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. Among her broader research interests are transnational communist networks, socialist modernism, critical archival practices, and the Global South.