Maria Fernanda Ordoñez Pinzon

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Maria Fernanda Ordoñez Pinzon

Preferred pronouns:

she/her
Birth year:

1995
Primarily based in or works from:

Colombia France Switzerland
Skills:

storytelling dramaturgy visual and performance art critical thinking and writing painting project management
Topics:

knowledge migration personal body collective healing
Contact information:

Currently working on:

Currently developing Bestiary, a puppet performance for La Ferme de la Chapelle in Geneva exploring polyphony, spectral voices and non human entities. In parallel, developing Ecosystem of the Spark, a collaborative performance project with Dimitra Charamandas at Cabane B in Bern.

Quick Facts:

Maria Fernanda Ordoñez is a visual artist and performer born in Bogotá in 1995 and based in Geneva since 2016. She holds a Bachelor in Visual Arts with a focus on painting and a Master in Contemporary Artistic Practices Work. Master from HEAD Genève, and previously trained in theatre in Bogotá. She received the Prix Neumann of the City of Geneva in 2023 and the Kiefer Hablitzel Göhner Art Prize in 2024, and was a finalist for the Swiss Performance Art Award in 2024. Her practice unfolds at the intersection of performance and other media such as drawing, painting, writing, puppetry and object based work. She is interested in emotional architectures, phantasmagoria and non human entities. Her personal experience of migration runs through her work, exploring how the body and voice can give form to liminal spaces. She draws on tools of the clown such as excess, celebration and cynicism to reveal what remains hidden. She is also interested in collective processes rooted in non academic forms of knowledge such as cooking, collective storytelling and celebration. Her work has been presented at venues including Istituto Svizzero in Palermo, CAPC Musée d’art contemporain in Bordeaux, TU Théâtre de l’Usine in Geneva, Arsenic in Lausanne, eeeeh! in Nyon, La cápsula in Zurich, Zabriskie in Geneva and Urgent Paradise in Lausanne.

Three relevant works from the last 5 years of artistic practice:

Highest educational degree:

Master of Arts HES SO in Visual Arts, Work. Master Contemporary Artistic Practices, HEAD Genève Haute école d’art et de design, Geneva, Switzerland, 2020–2023

Work samples:

Parafernalia

Parafernalia is a tragicomic performance infused with melancholic undertones. In a turbulent journey, Maria Fernanda Ordoñez blends pompous celebrations, vengeful catharsis and tender love boleros to embrace the nostalgia of life. She embodies a disoriented passenger, disturbed by the interference of restless spirits. Drawing from contemporary clowning, puppet theatre and stand up, the piece narrates with sincerity, poetry and self irony the experience of migration and the states of perplexity that accompany it.

Beginning in the space of an airplane, the performance quickly expands beyond it, moving through multiple sensory landscapes. Parafernalia addresses what surrounds migration and speaks from the historical and structural oppressions that often drive departure. The work seeks a space beyond disorientation, attempting to land by reconnecting with bodily vitality, opening the voice and recognizing the peripheral perspective as a source of knowledge.

Through dance, puppetry, layered melancholic soundscapes and shifting performative devices, the character gradually finds a path back to life. Parafernalia becomes a space of mourning and celebration at once, a phantasmagoric session, a peripheral gaze and a temporary office for the relief of transit.

The word parafernalia in Spanish refers to an assemblage of ritual or decorative objects surrounding a person or an act, often used in a pejorative sense. Here it evokes both the heavy social and administrative weight carried by migrant bodies and the possibility of excess, celebration and extravagance when there is nothing left to lose.

Architectures émotionnelles

Emotional Architectures
Performative reading, 30 minutes
Pavillon Sicli, Geneva, Switzerland
13 September 2025

Presented at Pavillon Sicli as part of the European Heritage Days, Emotional Architectures is a 30 minute performative reading created in situ upon invitation by the architecture collective Sujets Objets. Conceived for the former fire extinguisher factory that now houses Pavillon Sicli, the performance brings together a series of texts that question the notion of heritage beyond material legacy. The work unfolds between the interior and exterior spaces of the building. This configuration allowed the use of smoke devices, resonating with the site’s former industrial function.

Collective Culinary Practices

Cooking appears in my practice as a collective space of preparation, transmission and conversation. Through the preparation of food, stories circulate, memories emerge and different forms of knowledge are shared. These moments function as informal dramaturgical spaces where recipes, gestures and ingredients open discussions around migration, transmission and everyday rituals.

2025.08
Cooking and dramaturgy workshop, FAR Festival et Fabrique des Arts Vivants, with DDD Dramaturgie Danse Dialogue, Nyon, Switzerland

2023
Nos gusta la mala vida, Cocina Corazón with Jonas Van Holanda, TU Théâtre de l’Usine, Geneva, Switzerland

2022

On adore la mauvaise vie, Nos gusta la mala vida, collective exhibition, Espace eeeeh!, Nyon, Switzerland, 2022

Within the exhibition, I proposed Tamales frescos, tamales calientitos, a collaborative cooking workshop and collective reading around the preparation of Tolimense tamales and the multiple stories carried by this dish. The workshop explored transmission, migration and the circulation of ingredients and culinary knowledge across territories.

2021–2025 – Cooking and preparing meals for vernissages, festivals and independent art spaces, including VISIBLE (FMAC), Paraponera (collective Outrage), Making Mistakes is Human (Renens, Soul2Soul), meals with Viola Poli (La Buvette de Beaulieu, Maison Promenade des oiseaux), MUTA (Viola Poli, Soul2Soul), Geneva, Switzerland.