Mammal is the title poem from Caballero’s book MAMMAL, which won the 2022 US National Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize and was a semifinalist for the 2023 Vassar Miller Poetry Prize.
Embodied experience is murky ground, at once the root and lofty branch of consciousness, but if we are to disassemble the narratives that are used against us, we must first dare to name them–without romanticism or preciousness.
This performative work honors Caballero’s explorations of the tension between physicality and selfhood, between biological processes and their cultural implications, and between ecology and the storylines we construct to attempt to contain it.
From Caballero's Literal Litoral series of choreographic works, in which the poet translates her verse into movement, expressing the underlying currents of emotion in her poems. Her performances reveal the intricate relationship between body language and the spoken word and the deeply embodied nature of the digital.
In seeking to convey the urgency and immediacy of performance, Caballero has intervened prints of her poems via her choreography to create a guttural mark-making that speaks a new visual language.
Photography by Luis Gaspar.
The project is part of the subtheme
Author
Ana María Caballero
Ana María Caballero is a Colombian-American multidisciplinary artist and poet whose work critically examines how biology shapes cultural structures, particularly the gendered ideal of sacrifice.
Through a practice spanning performance, sculpture, installations and virtuality, Caballero challenges entrenched narratives, revealing the often-silenced costs of care. Her work also explores the evolution of the book in the contemporary and digital world.
Caballero's innovative fusion of literature and technology has positioned her at the forefront of digital poetics. She co-founded theVERSEverse, a digital poetry gallery, and became the first living poet to sell a poem at Sotheby’s as well as the first artist ever to receive a triple Lumen Prize finalist nomination.
Caballero published six books. Her first, Entre domingo y domingo, received Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize. Her nonfiction manuscript, A Petit Mal, was awarded the International Beverly Prize and named finalist for nine other literary prizes. Her book Mammal was awarded the 2022 Steel Toe Books Award and was a semifinalist for the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize.
A graduate of Harvard, she’s exhibited at venues like the Ashmolean Museum, HEK Basel and the Francisco Carolinum and performed live at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Art Basel, Art Genève and Fundación Telefónica, among other leading cultural events.
Her work is often featured by publications such as Artnet, The Art Newspaper, Poetry International, BOMB, El País and NPR.
In 2025, she was named a Forbes' Top 50 Latin Women to Follow, recognizing her significant contributions to contemporary art and literature.
