Trinity

24 Feb 2023

Fabric, wax, metal, wood, dry grass.

Move from Russia to Serbia allows Maria to establish relations between the two languages, serving as a starting point for this work.

"Life" in Serbian means "belly" in Russian, Maria builds a relationship between the two meanings to use it as a metaphor for the place that the soul might occupy in the body. This idea brought an image about creation from which she took the Christian belief of the Trinity as a way to build and understand the different layers of the sculpture:
On the one hand we are made up of the material, bones, flesh and skin, on the other of culture, the world of ideas and beliefs, and finally the soul, consciousness or spirituality, that «unknown» that can transcend the material world.

These ideas are presented in three elements. A central object -a small ball- stands as that incomprehensible thing at the core of all things. Inserted in a small tableau it suggests culture as a custodian of the different ways the «soul» is understood.

The large structure presents the body, an apparently physical container but whose experience is as immense and mysterious as the spiritual.
Finally, the skin of the sculpture, held together by rivets, is inspired by the skin of aircraft and submarines. While the plates of the latter are made of metal, the sculpture is covered with fabric, whose fragility and organicity - in its wrinkles and forms - suggest the skin of a living creature. This is a metaphor for the fact that in the hands of politics, the human body is just as much a military tool, as a toy.