
ARTIST
STATEMENT
© Maria Baranova
I am a theatre and performance artist based in NYC with roots in the hills of Western Massachusetts and Buenos Aires, Argentina. My work explores the relationship between human beings, the natural world, and the numinous—that which inspires awe and is wholly Other. I am interested in subverting the notion that we are separate from the other beings and environments that surround us. If we come alive to the world through all of our senses, is it possible for the boundary to fall away?
My non-narrative performances explore the human organism and its experience in relationship to objects and environments. My theatrical work pulls this investigation into the imaginative realm using narrative, character, and text in addition to movement and objects. Throughout my work, common objects transform: a piece of wooden cow fencing changes into a gigantic fountain pen; wind chimes become an aural, metallic cloud suspended in a forest. This aesthetic leads audiences into a heightened reality that lies somewhere between the everyday and the enchanted. It aims to surprise people’s sense of perception, invite wonder, and open up new possibilities in how we experience the world around us.
As human beings in contemporary, industrial times, we generally experience ourselves as solitary individuals. We are asked increasingly to think about our identities as they relate to larger structures of power. But this is not the whole human story. My work investigates those elemental aspects of being human that exist across time and space—love, our connectedness to nature, and our capacity to experience that which inspires awe, that which is wholly Other. If we explore these threads with greater depth, is it possible to shatter the conception of ourselves as finite beings in time and step into a boundless state of experience, if just for a moment?