Ana Maria Caballero
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Ana Maria CaballeroUnraveling - Book Sculpture Series, 2025A non-commercial Artist Proof of the book exists | MP4 2 minutes; 7 seconds 1080 x 1920 | Bitcoin text-only inscription
Book 1 of 1*
Unraveling is the fifth edition from Ana María Caballero’s Book Sculptures, an eight-part series that questions how society values poetry. This series proposes the book as a sculptural object and will see Caballero print eight different books, each as an edition of one, with a unique ISBN and the anatomy and structure of a traditional book. The books in this series contain only one poem, printed 197 times in their pages. When taken as integers, the digits in 197 add up to 8, a number of abundance. The physical 1/1 book is accompanied by a 1/1 video work that presents a single page of the book endlessly turning while Caballero reads the poem, highlighting an important through-line in Caballero’s work: the fusion of poetic and physical voice. This video work is purposefully minimal to underscore the piece’s sound element and present poetic language as art in and of itself. Indeed, the digital wields something the page cannot: voice. The work includes a third element, a text-only Bitcoin inscription, with no visuals attached. Caballero's Book Sculptures describe the ways our story-telling evolved – from page, to digital media, to decentralized ledger. By inscribing her verse onto Bitcoin, the mother of all blockchains, Caballero nods to our future but also to our past, when we carved our memories onto stone. Caballero's intentionally unadorned video work also honors poetry's oral tradition, when verse was shared through voice. This poem is from Caballero’s prize-winning book Mammal.45.7 x 30.5 x 7.6 cm
18 x 12 x 3 in -
Ana Maria CaballeroMilk, 2023Book 1/1
Ana María Caballero’s Book Sculptures question how society values poetry and propose the book as a sculptural object.
Milk, the third volume from this eight-part series, exists as a single edition and contains one eponymous poem printed 197 times in its pages. When taken as integers, the digits in 197 add up eventually to 8, a number that represents abundance.
As with the other tomes in Caballero’s Book Sculptures, Milk has a unique ISBN and the anatomy and structure of a traditional book.
Caballero is deeply interested in exploring new ways to transact poetry. When objects are transacted, they are exchanged, shared, given, received. Value is assigned.
Sometimes verse is considered to be immaterial, but nothing is more material than the artworks, verses, memories that enter our minds as we wait in line, sit in traffic, boil eggs. Nothing is more material than what makes us tick.
Caballero’s Book Sculptures celebrate the materiality of poetry and the renewed cultural agency afforded to verse via blockchain provenance.
The collector of the physical 1/1 book also receives a 1/1 video work of a single page of the book endlessly turning while Caballero reads the poem, accentuating the artist’s expansion of the ways poetry can be experienced, exhibited and transacted in the digital age.
Milk is the recipient of a 2024 Christopher F. Kelly Academy of American Poets Prize and was also published by the Academy of American Poets Magazine, one of the most prestigious literary publications of our time. It forms part of Caballero’s prize-winning book MAMMAL.16 x 24 x 2.5 cm
6 1/4 x 9 1/2 x 1 in -
Ana Maria CaballeroThe Wish, 2023Book 1/1
Two editions of Book Sculptures currently exist: The Wish and Another Airport Poem. The Wish is from Caballero’s prize-winning book Mammal and was originally published by the South Dakota Review. It was exhibited at the Lumen Prize-shortlisted exhibition Poème SBJKT in Paris. Another Airport Poem was exhibited at MedSeArt in Menorca.
Collectors of Book Sculptures also receive an MP4 of a single page of the book endlessly turning while Caballero reads the poem, accentuating the artist’s expansion of the ways poetry can be experienced, exhibited and transacted in the digital age.16 x 24 x 2.5 cm
6 1/4 x 9 1/2 x 1 in
ANA MARÍA CABALLERO is a multidisciplinary, award-winning Colombian-American poet and artist. Her work explores how biology delimits our societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil off romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue.
The speakers in her poems find their voice by navigating the intellectual and the everyday, daring to name what’s left unsaid in that all-important space of home.
Her poems are moments of private rebellion, made public.
Caballero’s first book of poetry, Entre domingo y domingo, received Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize and was second place in the nationwide Ediciones Embajale Prize. Acclaimed international publishing house Valparaíso Press acquired its rights and re-released it in 2023.
She’s published two chapbooks in English. Reverse Commute (2015) was anthologized by Silver Birch Press, and Finishing Line Press published Mid-life (2016) as a standalone chapbook.
Her first nonfiction manuscript, A Petit Mal, was awarded the International Beverly Prize and was published in 2023. It was also a finalist for the Kurt Brown Prize, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the Tarpaulin Sky Press Book Awards, the Essay Press Prize, the Electronic Book Awards, the Split/Lip Press reading cycle and longlisted for the 2022 Memoir Prize. Out of an entry pool of over 2300 applicants, it was named a finalist for the INDIES Forward Review Book of the Year Award.
Mammal, her most recent manuscript, was awarded the 2022 Steel Toe Books Award in Poetry and was published in 2024. It was also a semifinalist for the prestigious Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, designated as a Manuscript of Exceptional Merit by Tupelo Press and a finalist for both The Atticus Review and Driftwood Press reading cycles.
Tryst, a collection of three short stories published in 2022 with Web3 publishing house AlexandriaLabs as a limited edition of 100 NFTs, sold out in under forty-eight hours.
Her Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net-nominated work has appeared in journals such as the L.A. Review of Books, The Academy of American Poets Magazine, Portland Review, Salamander, Tupelo Quarterly, Gigantic Sequins and The Southeast Review and reached the final round of consideration in Ploughshare’s Emerging Writers Contest.
She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she was awarded a scholarship by Madrid’s Complutense University to complete her honors thesis work. As a graduate student of Poetry at Florida International University, she was both the winner and runner-up of the Academy of American University Poetry Prize.
Widely recognized as one of the leading figures in digital poetry, she’s the first living poet to sell a poem via Sotheby’s and the first artist ever to be a triple Lumen Prize Finalist. Her work has also been recognized with a MAXXI Bvlgari Finalist Nomination, a Sevens Foundation grant and a Knight Foundation Art + Tech Fellowship Nomination
