Transgresoras: Artists Giana De Dier and Marilyn Boror Bor with Elena Shtromberg

Marilyn Boror Bor (Guatemalan, b. 1984) is an independent curator, visual artist, art professor, and Maya-Kaqchikel cultural manager. She is recognized for her socially engaged artistic practice, her work explores themes such as Maya and Indigenous identity, historical memory, colonialism, and cultural resistance.

She has participated in major international biennials, including the Aichi Triennale in Japan (2025), the 13th Leandre Cristòfol Art Biennial in Barcelona (2025), the 35th São Paulo Biennial (2023), BIENALSUR in Buenos Aires (2022), and several editions of the Paiz Art Biennial in Guatemala. Her work has also been exhibited widely across Latin America, Europe, Asia, and North America.

Her notable artist residencies include Hangar in Barcelona, Spain; Fundación Ama Amoedo FAARA in Uruguay (2023); ARTE-UNAM in Mérida, Yucatán (2022); and Espira/Espora in Nicaragua (2013, 2014, 2016). She has also lectured at prestigious institutions such as Cornell University, the Institute for Contemporary Art in Virginia, and the Museo Amparo in Mexico.

Her work is part of significant collections including the Museo Reina Sofía in Spain, the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende in Chile, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Panama. In 2023, she was selected by Phaidon Art Next Generation as one of the world’s most innovative contemporary artists.

Giana De Dier (Panamanian) is a contemporary collage artist whose work centers the experiences and heritage of Afro-Caribbean people who migrated to Panama during the construction of the Panama Canal in the early 1900s. Her art places particular emphasis on the experiences of Afro-Caribbean women, highlighting the ways they navigated and occupied space, formed relationships and built communities. In her collages, De Dier combines layers of paper, fabric, personal and archival records and photographs, to spark conversations on memory, migration, family history, identity, and representation. Her collages re-envision and explore the possibilities of what might be absent from photographic and historical archives. Her work challenges the erasure and misrepresentation of Afro-Caribbean women in historical narratives, offering alternative perspectives that honor their contributions and histories. De Dier studied visual arts at the University of Panama. Her collages have been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; the Panama Pavillion at the 60th International Art Exhibition, Venice; the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín, Colombia; 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London, UK; the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA; the Panama Canal Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Panama; and the Art Gallery of the IDB Employees Association, Washington.

Elena Shtromberg is professor of art history at the University of Utah. She is the author of Art Systems: Brazil and the 1970s (UT Press, 2016), and co-editor of Encounters in Video Art in Latin America (Getty Pubs, 2023). She is co-curator of Transgresoras: Mail Art and Messages, 1960s-2020s.

Zanna Gilbert is co-lead of the Latin American and Latinx Art History Initiative (LALAI). She is co-curator of Transgresoras: Mail Art and Messages, 1960s–2020s and How to Be a Guerrilla Girl (Getty Research Institute, 2025–6). She is co-editor of the recent publication Ed Ruscha's Streets of Los Angeles: Artist, Image, Archive, City (2025).