My work combines sculpture with performance, video, and photography to re-create
appropriated narratives. Each project wrestles with the intersection of functionality and
narrative, drawing on sources from art history, classical and contemporary literature, and
science. The glass wallpaper pieces I created in 2016 are shaped by both inhaled and exhaled
breath, and explore how tuberculosis captured America’s collective cultural imagination during
the 19th century, creating an image of an illness that affected both the body and the spirit.
Ligia Bouton was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and spent her childhood in London, England. She received a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Recent projects have been shown at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Guildhall Art Gallery in London, and SITE Santa Fe. Bouton was an artist-in-residence at the Bullseye Resource Center in Santa Fe. She is currently an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Foundations at the University of New Mexico.