Mariana Vassileva
Mikrofon
2017, Mixed media / 2021, Bronze, 150 × 60 × 60 cm
Nowadays the children in school are not allowed to sing, it is forbidden. We have actual, other problems with the voice and breath today…
- Mariana Vassileva
About the work
In an era witnessing the steady resurgence of authoritarianism, nationalism and racism the world over, Mariana Vassileva’s iconic work presents an all too recognizable image. While many governments still seek to curb freedoms of speech, others perhaps exploit free speech in overabundance. As the line between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ news continues to blur in our over-mediated culture, and information spreading digitally is even more viral than disease, we live in an era where the power of the wrong word has more capacity for destruction than ever before. Vassileva’s Microphone is emblematic of the very necessity for an exhibition such as Points of Resistance.
– Rachel Rits-Volloch
Bio
Mariana Vassileva was born in Bulgaria in 1964. Since graduating from the Universität der Künste in 2000, Vassileva continues to live and work in Berlin. Working across varied mediums such as video, sculpture, installation, and drawing, Vassileva’s practice is concerned with the poetry that lies beneath the quotidian and the routine. Based upon observation of daily life, her works respond to an element of playfulness inherent in artist and viewer alike. With the curious gaze of a voyeur or of an urban anthropologist, the artist observes people and their surroundings in order to capture a moment of poetic imagery. Watching, and the distance it implies, are both method and subject of a body of work reflecting on human concerns familiar to us all: communication, cultural displacement, relations with self and other, loneliness and the humor hidden within the rhythms of the day-to-day.
Mariana Vassileva is an an internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist, having shown in major institutions including: Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (Canada); Tate Britain (UK); Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Spain); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA); The Israel Museum (Jerusalem); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany); Weserburg Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany); Kunsthalle zu Kiel (Germany); Edition Block (Berlin, Germany); The Stenersen Museum (Oslo,Norway); Total Museum (Seoul, Korea); Hong Kong Arts Centre (Hong Kong). Mariana Vassileva has participated in several international Biennials, such as: the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, The Beauty and the Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age (2010); the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia, Rewriting Worlds (2011); Biennale Vento Sul in Curitiba, Brasil; the First edition of Bienal del Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (2007). Her works are held in international Collections in: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany); Rene Block Collection (Berlin, Germany); Koc Museum (Istanbul, Turkey); The Israel Museum (Jerusalem, Israel); La Caixa, Caja de Ahorros de El Monte y Fundacion el Monte (Spain); Lemaitre Collection (London-Paris); Kunsthalle Emden (Germany); Lidice Memorial, and in private collections.