New York artist María Berrío’s dream-like collages at Kohn Gallery are ecstatically beautiful. The eight works on view depict figures — mostly women who look vaguely mestiza — in intimate settings, either indoors or in expansive natural landscapes. Nothing much is happening, but Berrío’s intricate collage technique animates the works’ surfaces, making them crackle with energy.

Based in Brooklyn, María Berrio grew up in Colombia. Her large-scale works, which are meticulously crafted from layers of Japanese paper, reflect on cross-cultural connections and global migration seen through the prism of her own history.

Colombian-born, New York-based Berrio explores hope and longing in immigrant identity in her latest works featuring female figures and birds in slightly surreal landscapes. Combining paper collage and watercolours to create chimeric forms, the animal and human protagonists of her paintings are at once delicate and densely layered—a reflection of emotional durability under duress. This marks her first solo show on the West Coast, but Berrio’s work can also be seen in Victoria Miro’s London show examining women, labour and migration.