feature image: Photo: Eugene I-Peng Tang.
Written by Linda Marcus
Making “garments for buildings” is Maria Burundarena‘s dream. The Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist uses installation, fiber, collage, photography and projection to create fractured, unknowable but familiar landscapes to fully engage the viewer’s senses.
Burundarena is interested in the democratization of art, making art more accessible. She creates installations in public spaces, by first researching and then visiting them multiple times to observe the light and its daily routines. “I love making work in public spaces because the experience of the audience you reach is so different than a white cube gallery or a museum. I’m interested in the people on the street, people who live in the neighborhood and see that corner or street every day and watch how I intervene with my materials.”
She uses photographs and a method of illegibility, erasure and compression to create dynamic, colorful inviting spaces. She is constantly refining and reworking images and materials until she creates what she needs. Often, she won’t know exactly what it will look like until it is finished. ” I’m like an artist who can only see what it is after I make the work.”
Burundarena’s desire is to create an experience where the viewer is fully engaged and immersed. “I think the constant in my work is to disorient the viewer. I’m not very interested in being straight forward. I’m trying to create a connection where the viewer really has to come closer or go further away in order to understand what they see.” And what they see are spaces with reflective surfaces and vibrant colors. She often uses light to enhance the experience.
Burundarena grew up in the 90’s and was fed a steady diet of television and video games. The familiarity of screens and their use of RGB (Red, Green & Blue) to make up a screen is part of her DNA. For her, color is powerful. “I believe color has the ability to shake your soul and for me it’s like an explosion.” Burundarena is also interested in layering, compression, and building up meaning. She often uses things most of us wouldn’t notice. According to Burundarena, ” I’m interested in how small gestures work in space, constantly refining it to find meaning.”
She credits her background in fashion design and her knowledge of art and materials that has allowed her to create new environments. “As artists, we operate with materials loaded with meaning. Through art we can engage with different feelings, and it can take us to other spaces and places in a matter of seconds. I’m very interested in the capacity of art to do this. It’s a different scenario than everyday life. It’s like a world I’m creating, and it needs to be understood by living in it.
Compound Yellow, xerox prints, foil, metal structures and colored lights, dimensions variable. Photo: Maria Burundarena
para Todxs, dimensions variable, animated collages on Zaz
Gallery LED billboard, NYC. Photo: Maria Burundarena.
Burundarena work isn’t necessarily political, but she also acknowledges how difficult it is to escape politics. She says art can present an alternative and also can heal.” A big goal of my work is to create alternative landscapes to everyday life, especially now, in a world where we are all suffering. Art has the ability to reflect what’s happening, but it can offer healing too.”
Viewers are often so enamored with Burundarena’s installations. Because the artwork is often ephemeral, Burundarena says people want to see themselves in the work, and using a cell phone to document the art is a double-edged sword. She also says there is a tension between taking photos and experiencing the work. “Maybe in being you cannot put words to it, but it’s something you feel. I’m very interested in operating in that reaction and those affects and in discovery. The best thing I can aim for is to have people remember what they see and how they felt. I want them to remember the emotion of the art piece, the emotion in it and behind it.”
Visit mariaburundarena.com to learn more and connect on Instagram at @mariaburundarena.
Maria Burundarena: Compression, Erasure, and Abstraction is published in Vol 39. Purchase a copy here.
Linda Marcus is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Drawing on her long history as a TV News journalist and fashion designer, her work in fiber and sculpture touches on issues of memory, identity, and materiality.
Marcus was recently awarded an art residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts as well as the Charles Allis Museum and numerous galleries across the country and in art publications. Currently, Marcus is the creative director and co-curator for the Saint Kate Arts Hotel in Milwaukee.