Maria Luisa de Villa was born and raised in Mexico City (CDMX) and has lived and worked between Mexico and Canada since 1961. A visual artist, curator, and researcher in the arts and culture of Mexico, with over 50 years of experience, she is recognized for her drawing, reflecting a sense of place and a timely message in the 21st century—the fragile balance between humans and nature. She sees art as a way of life and thought, exploring memory, correspondences, and movements that flow between art and nature and the associative fabric of culture. Committed to the arts and to Mexico, she promotes contemporaneity, visual poetics, poetry, music, Indigenous voices, Spanish in Canada, culinary arts, Guadalupe culture, cacao/chocolate, and the wise and ancient culture of the milpa, saying, “making art is making milpa.” She writes, collaborates with contemporary artists and Indigenous master artisans, leads discussions, curates creative exchanges, produces multidisciplinary video art and digital content, sensitizing perspectives and fostering creativity and love for the arts. She works on the series: milpa-pel /1000papers, Cempoalxóchitl, Corazón Yolotl /velvet skin, De todas las flores and El camino de la catrina / The Path of Catrina. Maria has been recognized on multiple occasions by The Canada Council for the Arts; Ontario Arts Council; Toronto Arts Council; Art Gallery of Sudbury; Northern Ontario Arts Association; York University Faculty of Fine Arts; CERLAC Centre for Research on Latin America and The Caribbean at York University; Hispanic Canadian Alliance at the University of Toronto; Canadian Heritage; Global Affairs Canada; Casa de la Ciudad de Oaxaca; Spanish-speaking Consular Corps in Toronto.
