Maru López is an artist, educator, and emerging craft researcher. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico she is presently based in San Diego, CA. Her practice is a process of exploration and a space of reflection about our connections to objects and the meaning we install in them. For the last decade, she has focused on jewelry, its intimate relationship with the body, and how this provides a powerful platform to process and share ideas. Her jewelry has been exhibited throughout Europe, Latin America and the United States including Jewellery is a Metamorphic view of the World in the Ilias Lalalounis Jewelry Museum in Greece, Manfred Bischoff: A Retrospective during Munich Jewellery Week 2015, Alchimia: An Anthology at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston Vinte e Tres: Joalharia Contemporanes na Ibero-America in Lisbon Portugal, II Bienal Latinoamericana de Joyeria Contemporanea in Argentina, Hot Dog: An Exhibition during SNAG 2019, Passengers in Munich Jewellery Week 2020, as well as Insurgencies: Women’s Art on the Border in the Era of the Cold War in The Front Gallery in San Diego and Objects D’ Art in Embajada Gallery in San Juan. Alongside her artistic practice, Maru teaches jewelry workshops and works as a museum educator in San Diego. Maru holds a BA in Latin American History, an AAS in Fashion Design, and studied jewelry for 4 years at Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School in Florence, Italy. She is currently pursuing an MA in Critical Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College where she is researching Puerto Rico, its crafts, notions of Puerto Ricanness, fluid movements of diaspora, and possibilities of re-imaginings.
