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
Will-O'-The-Wisp, 2026
- Group Exhibition at AG18, Vienna
| Aluminium, | 200x100 cm |
Just Your Right Shoulder, Just Your Left Shoulder, Just Your Right Hand, Just Your Left Hand, Just Your Chest, 2026
Aluminium, gauge, oil paint, silicone, VD
Observer 2.2, 2024/25
Aluminium, rotating mechanism, 89x89x12 cm
Ritual Study n.13, 2026
Black pigment on textile
“Through her works, Maria Belova reveals how protection, strength, and fragility are constructed through material, ritual, and belief. Her engagement with it unfolds through engraved metal surfaces. Historical images and ornamental depictions of nature are inscribed using techniques reminiscent of armor engraving. Armor traditionally signifies protection, strength, and invulnerability; yet historically it offered only partial safety. It was heavy, restrictive, and closely tied to visibility, rank, and status. Protection here is not absolute, but negotiated through material, belief, and display.
This ambivalence is particularly evident in The Forest. Based on a copper engraving by Israel van Meckenem from after 1485, ornamental images of nature dissolve into abstracted forms that recall camouflage. Forests historically functioned as spaces of refuge — places to hide and escape exposure in open fields. At the same time, they can be unsettling environments: dense with sound, obscured vision, and hidden presences. In the engravings, trees, unknown fruits, and human figures appear intertwined. What seems protective can become disorienting; what appears decorative may conceal danger.
The sculptural works extend this inquiry into belief systems and ritual as strategies for coping with the unknown. In Ritual Study, a series of performative installations made from granulated materials such as flour, pigment, and salt record the traces of bodily movement during ritual actions. What remains is not the body but its imprint. The viewer encounters physical evidence of action — marks, gestures, patterns — without witnessing the act itself. Prayers become visualized without being spoken, and belief is present without a visible subject.”
– Julia Harrauer, Curator of the show