HELLO

Mariia Korneeva was born and raised in a multicultural family on Sakhalin Island, Russia, and is currently based in London, UK. Mariia works at the intersection of art and science, with the themes of neurodivergence and disability in connection to geology and climate change. 

 

Before starting her Master's Degree at UAL, Mariia had a journalistic and art photography background informed by her monocular (2D) vision. 

Recently, her gaze turned to volumetric art making, realising herself as a transdisciplinary artist who creates different depth and scaled artworks, from prints and photography to sculpture, installations and performances. These projects are inspired by places she holds dear - her Sakhalin island home, Joya desert in Spain, where she participated in an Art and Ecology residency, and concrete land art architecture, such as City by Michael Heizer and Cretto by Alberto Burri.

 

Over the past two years Mariia collaborated with different scientists and gained experience working in a laboratory, not only during her studies but also at ‘Mattering Life’ art and science residency and ‘Loading’ - a collaboration between artists and scientists. Currently, she participates in ‘Ecofutures,’ a digital residency between artists and researchers in London and Hong Kong.

 

Mariia’s current practices are developed through personal journaling and autotheory connecting her experiences of being a woman, feminist, queer, crip and a late diagnosed AuDHD person. Alongside theory and practice, her works draw parallels between bodies and minds, specifically minds that are considered systemically lesser, unworthy and exploitable and where she perceives that Earth is treated in the same manner. In her research the collective materials of the Earth and human body (minerals, metals, water, and energy) are addressed, as well as the cyanotype process that represents the vibrant materiality and agency of things: “This sense of a strange and incomplete commonality with the outside may induce vital materialists to treat non-humans, animals, plants, earth, even artefacts and commodities more carefully, more strategically, more ecologically” (Bennett, 2010). 

Mariia realises herself as an integral part of a giant superorganism, and she always gives personhood to the Earth.

 

Also working with found objects and building work based on land art practices, her approaches reference audience participation. This is further informed by childhood amateur archaeology adventures with her dad, and may also complement pattern recognition strength, part of her autistic experience. 

 

Grokking (Heinlein, 1961), is the practice that Mariia uses to connect with places, materials and information on a deep and personal level:  “Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed — to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science, and it means as little to us as colour does to a blind man” (Heinlein, 1961).

 

Mariia is always open to collaborative practice.