Hi, my name is Maria

ABOUT ME

I see pain and suffering. I feel the versatility of emotions. I bring a visual language to the feelings that live in the background of consciousness and are often carefully hidden. To walk in pain is to live the pain. Make it part of one's identity. I need to show the audience that they are alive. Bring them out of the matrix of familiar feelings, as worn-out as old slippers. And through the experience, petal by petal, to open their hearts. For compassion and love. For horror and beauty. This is my beat. And yes, I'm experiencing it now. And this is me, alive. In this body and with this emotion.

I like using installations as part of my artistic practice. I immerse viewers in worlds, vivid images of intense, pulse-pounding sensory experiences. I never know exactly how I'm going to end up with a particular issue. But for sure, I will always run through an emotion at its maximum resolution - as tight as a bowstring before shooting an arrow. In ordinary life, we often calibrate ourselves, allow ourselves to feel, say, 10 or 15 percent. Is it self-pity? Oh yeah. We save time; we save heart muscle.

We choose NOT to feel because feeling once became painful. We adjust to the prosthesis of not-feeling - it's easier as we can't be hurt or offended. And the body that was once alive - in fact, a short time ago, becomes dead. My job as an artist is to give a neural stimulus to create emotion. To bring it to life. And to show who people really are. Beautiful, live, heart-beating creatures.