Maria Fernanda Cardoso has been announced as the recipient of the 2019/20 New Dimensions: NSW Visual Arts (Established) Fellowship, presented by Create NSW and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Cardoso will receive $30,000 in funding from Create NSW to focus on a self-directed professional development program and will also undertake an additional project or acquisition commission from the MCA up to the value of $20,000.

Maria Fernanda Cardosi. Photo © Daniel Boud

Internationally acclaimed for using unconventional and organic materials to explore ideas of nature and its relationships with culture and science, the Colombian-born, long-time Sydney resident has exhibited widely across Australia and overseas, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Centro de arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. Her practice includes sculpture, installation, performance and photography. Cardoso will use the Fellowship to create a new series of large-scale digital portraits documenting various species of the Maratus, an Australian spider. She will work in collaboration with leading photo-microscopy expert Geoff Thompson to photograph up to 20 of the 80 species, with the pair to work in consultation with museum curators...