Maria’s multifaceted practice reveals a blend of performance and objecthood, where the two are in a constant state of dialogue and exchange. It is predicated on her ability to make the invisible visible, to give form to the formless, and voice to the silent. Her works, imbued with a sense of absence, explore human desire for connection and transcendence, as well as the power structures that shape and constrain those aspirations.
Fine Art (Mary Evans), Chelsea College - University of the Arts London, 2023
Art Photography (Anja Manfredi), Schule Friedl Kubelka Wien, with the teaching contributions by Elfie Semotan, Josephine Pryde, Timm Rautert & others, 2019–2020
PASSAGE, accompanying program with Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl, Falckenberg Collection Deichtorhallen Hamburg (DE), 2024
Women in Tech, Villa Mautner Jäger, Vienna, 2024
Interspace, Galeria WY, Łódź (PL), 2024
ReA! Art Fair, Milan (IT), 2023
PARALLEL VIENNA, Vienna, 2023
Figures of Imagination. Trans..., Georg Kargl Permanent, Vienna, 2022
Soft Machine, Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art, Vienna, curated by Jakob Lena Knebl, 2022
Anti–Anti–Anti: de-visibility, unbiased biases and friends, Angewandte Festival, Vienna, curated by Mauricio Ianes de Moraes, 2022
Get It While You Can!, Never At Home, Vienna, co-curated by Maria Belova, 2022
Search for Your People, performative action with Mariya Vasilyeva, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, 2022
A shop is a shop is a shopbeta. Conceptual store, Kunsthalle, Vienna, curated by Klaus Speidel, 2022
Maria Belova: Unspoken, solo show in Konzilgedächtniskirche, Vienna, curated by Gustav Schörghofer SJ, 2021
The 8th Catholic Arts Biennial, The Verostko Center for the Arts, PA (USA), 2021
REALITY, Kunstsalon FLUC, Vienna, curated by Anna Zwingl & Brigitte Kowanz, 2021
Stille Räume, das Weisse Haus, Vienna, curated by Itai Margula, 2020
Bingo!, performative solo intervention, Belvedere 21, Vienna, 2020
Net Works, with Darja Shatalova, Kara Agora European Art & Research Center, online, curated by Julia Hartmann, 2020
Ya I Ona, performance with Darja Shatalova, in the framework of Question Me & Answer, Improper Walls, Vienna, curated by Smaranda Krings, Osama Zatar & Justina Speirokaite, 2019
Digital Communications & Branding, viennacontemporary, 2021–2024
Freelance art documentation & Content creator (with viennacontemporary, Phileas, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, ZAHORIAN & VAN ESPEN gallery, das weisse haus, Question Me & Answer, Improper Walls gallery, lt.art festival, multiple individual artists), 2020–now
Co-Curator, Get It While You Can!, Never At Home, Vienna (with Ganaël Dumreicher, Isolar Mesec, Felix Schellhorn, Marlene Stahl, Iris Writze), 2022
PR & Communications Responsible, A shop is a shop is a shopbeta. Conceptual store, Kunsthalle, Vienna, 2022
Nobody’s Watching, 2024
- Solo Exhibition at Vienna Collectors’ Club
- Observers 1.1-1.5, 2.1-2.2, 3
- Unique objects, hand-etched aluminium
- 49x49 cm, 89x89 cm, 100x73 cm
- Oversight, 2024
- Digital print, 225x152 cm
Opened in December at Vienna Collectors Club, Maria Belova’s solo show Nobody’s Watching has been on view through the Christmas season. In this countdown time when Advent rituals are performed casually, carved of religious meaning, Maria has mounted an exhibition tipping into supernatural, sacred powers manifested in new forms.
Maria’s new sculptures are inspired with divine celestial bodies—cherubim. In Old Testament, described as six-wing creatures—two wings covering the body, two raised up and shielding the face and two spread aside—they stay close to God and glorify him. They move extremely fast and when they move, as said, the sound of their flapping wings resembles a terrifying noise of an advancing army. Maria draws from the cherubim’s iconography and interprets their image in aluminium-cast objects. Exhibited in a white room with cold light, they appear like floating in the space—light-weighted, finely polished, with feathers etched on. The artist calls them Observers and places next to a large print of the street’s picture made from a drone. It alludes to an outside gaze of a camera registering life from above. Has surveillance substituted the divine control over the humanity?
In the current wars, technologies are employed for violence to an extent never seen before. Digital machines are meant to kill in hundreds and annihilate in kilometres—their bodies are becoming smaller, and lighter, and quitter while their destructive power is growing horrifically. Nowadays drones, purchased online or assembled by amateurs, are stuffed with explosives and sent to massacre. Macabre observes that emerge from above. Interestingly, in Apocalypse, cherubim receive a new feature—they have multiple eyes over their bodies. Watching all directions, they see everything and nothing can escape their gaze, meaning fatal destiny.
Rendered faceless, Maria’s Observers still refer to Christian visual culture, specifically the Orthodox tradition. Eliminating shadows around her light-reflecting sculptures, the artist seeks to achieve the feeling of immateriality of the objects, as they were visions made of concentrated air; or even symbols existing abstractly. Observer 3 adopts a front and closed composition (it’s said God sits on cherubim), while Observers 2.1 and 2.2 embody movement (it’s said God travels on them)—both images are typical for icons and murals in the Orthodox church. Though in Maria’s sculptures the movement is clearly of rotating nature; four wings are bound together like a propeller and meant to spin. Like a propeller of a drone…
Conversely, the show is titled Nobody’s Watching. And at first, it contradicts the idea of a total surveillance derived from divine supervision and yet outsourced to technological systems. It seems however that Maria refers to the concept of panopticon—a place where people can be controlled by a single guard. Built in the way that the guard isn’t visible in a tower dominating the site, the inhabitants can’t know whether they are observed or not in a particular moment. And even if nobody is watching, the possibility of being observed makes everyone behave in a demanded way. Frightening image which is becoming our new reality. And omnipresent flying entities, capable of all-seeing and destroying, seem to become new servants of this mysterious and concealed guard.
– Exhibition review by Liudmila Kirsanova
The Hero, 2024
- Aluminium, 28.5x28.5 cm each, all 120x120 cm
This artwork, crafted through the technique of etching—a method historically invented for decorating armory and weaponry—centers around the theme of the romanticization of violence and the archetypal hero. Mirroring the narrative of St. George Victorious, the piece revises a classic Christian myth, questioning its standard narrative. Rather than slaying a metaphorical dragon that stands for abstract evil, the central figure is depicted as an agent of violence against ordinary people—the real-life victims of his actions.
Encircled, he is surrounded by words sourced from media outlets, selected for their role in glorifying the image of the soldier. These words emphasize the stark contrast between the media portrayal of militaristic heroism and the harsh realities of violence and its tangible impact on real lives.
There Was No Boy But He Continues To Live, 2023/24
- Hand-Embossed Aluminium, 32x28,5x1 cm each
During World War I, the narrative of the Crucified Soldier—a purported account of an Allied soldier crucified with bayonets on the Western Front—gained widespread attention despite inconsistent eyewitness reports and a lack of physical evidence. A century later, similar stories are revived with the same aim: to shock the populace and vilify governmental "enemies."
This series of artworks interrogates the pervasive nature of media propaganda. It employs the form of riza—traditional metal coverings for Orthodox icons—to depict how propaganda stories function as "icons." These narratives, while widely recognized, often distort or entirely misrepresent the people and events they claim to portray. The intentional void left for the icon signifies the emptiness of these fabricated reports. The series also critically examines how such stories purposefully evoke martyr-like imagery, blending propaganda with Christian iconographic traditions to trigger deep-seated Judeo-Christian associations of suffering and sacrifice, thereby deeply resonating with the audience.
Ritual Study, 2021–now
- Series
-
Print on flour, pigment, salt, metal, dimensions variable
Ritual Study is a series of performative sculptures out of granulated materials which are exposing traces of people’s movements in various rituals. The artist uses her own body for exploration of various customs and lets those practices become an extension of her body. The sculptures stand inbetween material and immaterial, presence and absence, and invite a viewer to become an “investigator” of the scene, figuring a potential meaning of the action.
Acid of copper, 110x70 cm
ReA! Art Fair, Milan, Italy 2023
Color pigment on floor, 130x90 cm
Archival pigment print, 420x594 mm
Dizziness in Dunes, 2023
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with Natasha Moreno
- Sand, salt, 4-channel sound installation, 5:14 min, dimensions variable
- Maria Belova, Ritual Study n.9 (Burial Shroud)
- Mixture of linseed oil, coal, curcuma and petroleum jelly on cotton and
organza, 200x145 cm, 200x145 cm, 120x130 cm.
Transcending the physical body and transitioning to another state of consciousness is at the center of Maria Belova’s and Natasha Moreno’s absorbing installation “Dizziness in Dunes”. Drawing inspiration from the whirling practice of Sufi dervishes, the artists fill the exhibition hall with circulating sound, putting the completely still space into vertiginous motion. The sound echoes the traces of the wiped sand on the floor – evidence of the dancing performance that took place out of public view.
The installation is accompanied by “Ritual Study n.9 (Burial Shroud)” – a continuation of Belova’s Ritual series. The human body is unfolded out of its funeral cloths, layer after layer, until the person disappears, leaving behind what has forged it. Throwing off the shackles of physical embodiment, the absent figure brings a hope of liberation and a dream of a new beginning.
Unspoken, 2020/21
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4 channel sound installation, 12:02 min, dimensions variable
“Unspoken” is a sound installation consisting of 4 speakers spread in space and hidden from the viewer’s eyes. The barely audible singing is heard from them, appearing and fading away in different places, bringing the observer in a state of slight delusion. If one keeps their ears open, they would hear that that murmuring polyphony is actually praying, however appearing quite mechanical and inhuman. What seems to be a human voice first is in fact Siri, aligned and tuned to imitate chanting. The prayers she chants are taken from the online prayer walls — websites where people can post about their needs so others who come across those pleas can pray for them in response.
Maria Belova collected those posts, belonging to people of different religious backgrounds, age, social status and origin, and created a collective timeline piece — a lifespan of an abstract human being, with their requests changing from childhood to senility. Problems at school, broken hearts, health issues, spiritual quests, troubles with career, taxes and even unwanted insects in the house — all of it becomes equally relevant in this chaotic polyphony of the existence. Thus the artist emphasizes similarities that unite men and women in every quarter of the world and states: despite a common fallacy that technological development “liberates” us from being religious, people do believe like they always did and continuisly find new ways to express it.
“Search for Your People” (“Ищи Своих”), 2022
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Performative action with Mariya Vasilyeva
- 5 hours
- Digital print on paper, 15x18m
Watch Over Me, 2020
Stickers. 10x10cm
In traditional Russian society (later destroyed in the 20th century), icons – sacred images used in orthodox Christian devotion – were essential for every family. They were commonly situated in the corner of the room and due to the talent of their painter, those in the household would be constantly followed by the eyes of the painting’s subject throughout their daily activities. This fully corresponded to how religious consciousness was depicted at the time: a belief that something hidden from view, which has the right and power to punish for misconduct, was always watching. Thus, such icons appeared as a peculiar but effective moral regulator, encouraging socially responsible behaviour.
With industrialisation, religious consciousness then collapsed. People took power from religious institutions and transferred it to governmental ‘special services’. The need arose to apply other methods of legitimizing power which became now bureaucratic-administrative, one of them being ubiquitous surveillance. Today, introducing CCTVs into urban environments is named one of the most plausible explanations of the ‘great crime drop’. Urban environments became safer and inhabitants acted for the benefit of each other; but the freedom as we perceived in the 20th century, became lost. Overall non-loneliness, universal visibility and the fragility of human ethical choices: those are the subjects the artist raises with her work.
Introduction to Japanese Haiku, 2020/21
With a warbler for a soul, it sleeps peacefully, this mountain willow.
In lantern-light My yellow Chrysanthemums Lost all their color...
All round steel
100 W x 140 H x 100 D cm each
In the series of steel sculptures, the abstraction of the language is obtained through multiple metamorphoses of translations, bringing a Word to the state of a pure line. Taking the haikus of Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson and Kobayashi Issa as foundation for the pieces, Maria Belova translates them into a sign language and then captures the transient trajectories of hands into enduring metal constructions. Performative in their nature, those sculptures are carrying within them glimpses of what traditional Japanese poetry is aiming for — say more with less and seal beauty of simple things in eternity.
Bereshith (In the Beginning), 2020
4:29 min, 16x9
Edit & Camera: Roland Schafek
Performer: Maria Belova
Bereshith (In the Beginning) (2020) is a one channel muted video showing a person performing what seems to be a ribbon dance. The artist is drawing trajectories which correspond to the movements of hands in sign language and so narrates the opening to the book of Genesis — the story of creation.
The word here is born ex nihilo in front of the viewer’s eyes. No sound is disturbing the observer bringing them into meditative state of pure contemplation. The vast red ribbons are dominating over a dancer, stating the supremacy of the universal consciousness over a human mind but still being inextricably linked to each other.
Bereshith merges human consciousness, language and Logos into oneness.