Maria Belova’s practice begins with longing: the desire to transcend the structures that keep us bound to earthly life. Religion forms one point of departure, but it also extends more broadly into ideology, propaganda, and surveillance, pointing to how any system of belief can become a means of control. She borrows from religious iconography, art-historical heritage, rituals – forms so deeply inherited that they work as a half-conscious shared language. The friction between the physical and the immaterial shows in the artist’s interest in both the permanence of hand-etched metal sculptures and the fleeting nature of site-specific installations, whether in granular materials, sound, or moving image.
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, Birke Gorm, Mirela Baciak, Josephine Pryde, Timm Rautert & others, 2019–2020
WILL-O’-THE-WISP, AG18 Gallery, Vienna, curated by Julia Harrauer
re:stART International Residency, Quartier am Hafen, Cologne (DE)
Driveway Dreams, bureau fomo, Vienna
Fragile Constructs, gezwanzig projects, Vienna
PASSAGE, accompanying program with Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl, Falckenberg Collection Deichtorhallen Hamburg (DE)
Budapest Contemporary Art Fair, Budapest (HU)
Women in Tech, Villa Mautner Jäger, Vienna
Interspace, Galeria WY, Łódź (PL)
PARALLEL VIENNA, Vienna
Soft Machine, Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art, Vienna, curated by Jakob Lena Knebl
Anti–Anti–Anti: de-visibility, unbiased biases and friends, Angewandte Festival, Vienna, curated by Mauricio Ianes de Moraes
Get It While You Can!, Never At Home, Vienna, co-curated by Maria Belova
Search for Your People, performative action with Mariya Vasilyeva, University of Applied Arts, Vienna
A shop is a shop is a shopbeta. Conceptual store, Kunsthalle Vienna, curated by Klaus Speidel
The 8th Catholic Arts Biennial, The Verostko Center for the Arts, PA (USA)
REALITY, Kunstsalon FLUC, Vienna, curated by Anna Zwingl & Brigitte Kowanz
Bingo!, performative solo intervention, Belvedere 21, Vienna
Net Works, with Darja Shatalova, Kara Agora European Art & Research Center, online, curated by Julia Hartmann
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.