The legend of El Dorado was inspired by the legendary recounts of a town in the Americas believed to be of great wealth, and stemming from folk stories of a South American indigenous chief who would cover his body in gold dust at Lake Guatavita in what is now Colombia. Spanish and English conquistadors set numerous expeditions in the 16th century, willing to die for a city of unimaginable wealth that was never found.                                                            

Barraza’s body of work uses gold not only as a metaphor but as a medium to convey a reversion of the colonial gaze through images of pop female icons and of Mercury, the Roman god of shopkeepers, merchants, thieves, and tricksters. Gold abounds in her portraits and gilded painting interventions, addressing the European savage looting yet highlighting the allure of the precious metal. El Dorado encompasses two- and three-dimensional objects that also are an ode to James Lee Byars, whose work, like Barraza’s, is imbued with elements of both history of art and philosophy.

For 30 years Myra Barraza has built a steadfast career after initial studies for the bachelor’s in arts at The Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. in 1989-1990. Winner of the Drawing Award from the Museum of Latin American Art of Long Beach, California (2008); the First Prize at the Santo Domingo Drawing Salon in the Dominican Republic (2007); and the 2009 Ibero-American Print Biennial of Cáceres, Spain, among other recognitions; Barraza has made important contributions to artistic discourse and has become one of the leading artists in her native region investigating issues of contemporary life such as gender identity, memory, and nature vs culture dichotomies. In 2016, she was a Guest Visitor of the Federal Republic of Germany to Berlin Art Week, and recipient of a Travel Grant in 2015 by the Patricia Phelps Cisneros Foundation to attend the CIRMA Forum in Tokyo. In Spain, she was selected for the XXXI Pontevedra Biennial: “Utropicos” curated by Santiago Olmo in 2010, and for “Meso-America: Oscillations and Artifices” at the Atlantic Center for Modern Art in Las Palmas Gran Canarias in 2002, as well as awarded an Artists Residence at the Fundación Valparaíso in Almería”. Between 2006 and 2010 she developed a body of work under the title “Republic of Death”, that was exhibited at the Spanish Cultural Centres in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Barraza has actively created and engaged with community projects such as the art and literature E-Magazine El ojo de Adrián of which she was a Founding Member and Editor between 2009 and 2012; and Y.ES Contemporary Art for El Salvador, of which she was a Council Member between 2015 and 2018.

Barraza has exhibited her work at the Museo del Barrio in New York, the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña in Puerto Rico, the Museum of Modern Art in Guatemala, the Latino Cultural Center, in Dallas, Texas, and the II Biennial of Lima, Peru. In 2013 her work was shown as part of “Mixtape”, curated by Selene Preciado at MoLAA, and of “Nine Women in the Arts” at the National Chiang Kai- Shek Cultural Center in South Korea, and most recently at Wells Art Contemporary, England.