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