Featured Artist – Maria Ivanova
I create “photos from different worlds” as I call them, and animated films. In my works I use photos, textures and paint a lot of fur and hair. Characters in my works don’t have names, and they are not animals, nor are they humans. They are what they are – different type of species from faraway. Every “photo” is provided with a very short story, sometimes just few words. It’s like as if you are walking down the street and some people are passing by, and for a brief moment you heard scraps of conversations and thoughts… the next moment they are gone. I love this feel of mystery and that something is left untold. I think there is a lot of freedom in open endings.
Sometimes when everyhting in life becomes overwhelming, I seek retreat, I seek shelter within myself. It is then, when it opens – a door, or a window… and I can catch a glimpse of something not connected to daily troubles. Some light, some shadows, something otherworldly. And if in that moment I am sensitive enough, these light and shadows can leave traces, they can transform, like in photography, into visual form, into images, into frozen moments of someone’s live and untold stories.