MAIRA SENISE

Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Artist statement

My work consists of painting, sculpture, video, performance and installation. The paintings and sculptures emerge as part of an imaginary space that blends together disconcerting fables and everyday feminine ornaments. It interrupts the passivity of a universe—which is childish only in appearance—by constructing deviations from the form and intertwining the human and the animal. I feel an incessant need to bring known figures somehow, and I do this either in a diluted way or more explicitly so, in my path towards abstraction. The abstraction I seek is one that does not evade figurativeness, it insists on a different construction in which what we see cannot be recognized or identified because it remains within the inorganic, unimagined world conceived. Abstract and figurative visual languages merge. These figures are humorous but actually exist in an eerie and violent universe, where things are destroyed and abandoned. All materials are valid, from oil and acrylic to glitter, shampoo bottles, nail polish and everything in between. I work with everyday symbols to create complex abstract environments: houses, flowers, hands, among others. It resembles a space between the childish and primitive, and most of all it brings to the drawing the means of learning and desire of representation. I give myself a lot of space to find accidental events while working, and I rely on these events to guide my process. I leave clues for myself. I am really attracted to this line between the...

Artwork