While growing up in Bogota Colombia, Maritza Wild Chateau developed a strong passion and affinity for the arts. Even after receiving a BA in anthropology from La Universidad de Los Andes, Chateau remained dedicated to her art form of choice-- photography, and relocated to New York City where she continued her education and received an MA in Media Studies from The New School For Social Research. From there, Chateau went on to lead an extremely diverse career in the arts.
Alongside her extensive world travels, Chateau’s visual style has been formed by her various professional endeavors as an art director, producer and photographer. She has worked with numerous agencies specializing in the Hispanic market in Colombia and New York City, and worked for 2 years with the School Of American Ballet photographing the dancers for the yearly publication called "Allegro".
While travelling for commission and pleasure, Chateau has had the good fortune to visit numerous breathtaking locations all over the globe. This include, but are not limited to, India, Rwanda, Madagascar, Australia, and Japan. When questioned about her wanderlust, Chateau states “I have always had a passion for discovering the soul, the archeology of spaces that reveal a vitality, a hope, a sadness, a despair, a happiness, a nostalgia, a mysticism, and above all the feeling of the human presence through time. During the years past I have traveled extensively to Asia, India, and Latin America looking for the soul of these spaces. I am fascinated and fed by the beauty of these various cultures and I am honored to capture their nuance and explore the common thread that joins us all . . .”
This fascination is especially prevalent in Chateau’s recent work, as for the past decade she has been dedicated to capturing traditional kitchens in diverse regions such as Mongolia, Papa New Guinea, Myanmar and Cuba. Even with this large spanning project developing (which will culminate in a book), Chateau has also been working on a solo exhibition entitled “Motion and Stillness”, which will debut this June at the Ellsworth Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
For our Trees in Focus exhibition, Chateau contributed a breath-taking piece that she took while travelling in Bhutan. Entitled “The Sacret Forest”, this photograph aims to “show familiar, rustic, and archaic spaces, traditions specific to different cultures . . .”