Zorzón, María

She worked as a farm laborer, harvesting cotton, and as a cook at a rural school. At the age of 20, she moved from the countryside to the city, where she worked as a domestic worker and seamstress. As an adult, she studied at EMPA in Reconquista. In 1984, she moved to Buenos Aires, studied Visual Arts with Alicia Silman, and worked designing and making clothes. Between 1992 and 1997, she lived in Louisiana, USA. She studied photography and art history at Louisiana State University. In 1996, she won a scholarship to study at The School for Photographic Studies in Prague, Czech Republic. Since 1997, she has lived in Buenos Aires, in the La Paternal neighborhood, where she has her home-studio. Her work is shaped by various artistic documentary projects. This journey has led her to hold solo exhibitions in the USA, Mozambique, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Ecuador, and Argentina. She received two scholarships to exhibit her photography in Germany, in Leipzig 2002 and Berlin-Buenos Aires 2004, from the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2005, she was awarded a scholarship by the government of the Province of Gorizia, Italy, to create her project Parenti Lontani. In Italy, the books Parenti Lontani (2005) and Cordenons-Avellaneda (1998) were published. In 2004, she received a grant from FAUBA for her Agronomy Year 100 project, which was published as a book. In 2010, she was invited and sponsored by Roma TRE University in Rome to present her work "Nosotros los Gringos" at the CITADINANZA E MEMORIA MIGRANTE colloquium. In 2013, she received a grant from the Ministry of Innovation and Culture of the Province of Santa Fe to carry out her personal documentary photography project on the life of people in rural areas, from La Pampa Gringa to Chaco Santafesino, published as a digital book "FAMILIA RURAL" in 2016 by Espacio Santafesino Ediciones. In 2014, she received the First Prize at the National Salon 25 de Mayo in Santa Fe and the Third Prize at the National Visual Arts Salon Palais de Glace. She traveled to Italy, invited by the ISFCI Institute of Rome, to give an intensive course on documentary photography. In 2015, she traveled to Rome, invited by Roma TRE University to give a seminar on her personal work "Familia Rural" and to Berlin to inaugurate her exhibition "Parenti Lontani." In 2016, the Argentine Embassy in Ecuador invited her to represent Argentina in the celebrations of the Bicentennial of Argentine Independence, where she also gave a seminar at La Metro de Diseño and traveled to Italy to present her exhibition "Connessione Argentine." Her work has been published in media outlets in Argentina, the USA, Germany, Poland, and Italy.