The Department of Art and Art History and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at The University of Texas at Austin are pleased to announce Marianne Hoffmeister Castro as the 2022 recipient of the St. Elmo Arts Residency and Fellowship. Hoffmeister Castro will arrive in Austin in August and will be in residence during the 2022-23 academic year, culminating in the residency’s annual solo exhibition at the Wildflower Center.
The St. Elmo Arts Residency launched in fall 2018, offering one fellowship each academic year to a newly minted MFA artist in painting, drawing, print, photo, sculpture or multimedia. The residency supports emerging artists and the creation of new work by providing a dedicated studio and living space in South Austin in addition to a $30,000 stipend. Each fellow engages with the UT Austin community through classes and lectures at UT Austin and at the Wildflower Center.
Hoffmeister Castro was born and raised in Chile and she received her BFA from Pontificia Católica in Santiago, Chile in 2014. This past spring, she graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with her MFA and will be heading down to Austin from Pittsburgh to further explore the representation of nature and the construction of animality in our contemporary western world.
As an interdisciplinary artist, Hoffmeister Castro uses video, drawing, installation, and writing to explore the ways in which the natural world and its non-human beings are represented in our visual culture. She is especially excited to be working with the Wildflower Center as most of her research centers around nature. She also seeks to explore non-anthropocenic storytelling and the complex and contradictory ways we relate to animals. “I’m interested in finding other ways of representing or finding new narrative strategies to kind of decenter the human.”
Hoffmeister Castro was a recent resident in Madrid as part of the First Tentacular Writing Residency and in Kansas for the Mother’s Milk residency. She has exhibited and screened work in Chile, the US, Ecuador, Peru, Switzerland, and Korea.
About the Department of Art and Art History
The Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin includes the divisions of Art Education, Art History and Studio Art. It reflects the rigorous standards of a flagship institution, while offering an intimate environment for students to train as scholars, artists and educators in the arts.
About the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
As the Botanic Garden of Texas, The University of Texas at Austin Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center inspires the conservation of native plants through its public gardens, education and conservation programs, research, and consulting work. It is internationally renowned for its leading role as a champion of native plants and resilient landscapes.
About the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin
The College of Fine Arts educates artists, scholars and future arts educators in a context that emphasizes artistic excellence, advanced technology, cultural diversity and best professional practices. The college places a high priority on research and the creation of new work through its many divisions and departments, including among others, the Butler School of Music, the Department of Art and Art History, the Department of Theatre and Dance, the School of Design and Creative Technologies, Texas Performing Arts, the university’s arts presenting organization, and Landmarks, the university’s public art program. A comprehensive visual and performing arts college, degree concentrations from the B.A. to Ph.D. are offered in classical music and composition to acting, dance and scenic design to studio art and arts education, as well as the scholarly study of the arts in a broad range of disciplines.