I discovered Marya Kazoun at Venice Biennale of Art, in the Venice Pavillion. Her workOf Selves, Pixies and Goons is amazing!
Marya Kazoun was born in Beirut, Lebanon she and her family migrated to Canada and then to the United States. She received her BA in Interior Architecture, with honors, from the Lebanese American University (2000) and her MFA from S.V.A, New York (2004) She participated in the 51st Venice Biennale (2005) as well as the Global Art Glass Triennial in Sweden (2005).
Kazoun's works are interdisciplinary and based on installations and performances. Very often they are a combination of both. Each work has its own narrative.
Kazoun lives within his works and plays a central role. His performances are based on the creative process and often interact with the audience. This year, at the Venice Biennale, Kazour present both an installation and a performance. In the performance she is wearing a custom fabric that is used for the installation.
At the center of the space of the pavilion the installation looks like a sort of stairway, a passageway between different worlds, which is completely covered with yarns and threads in a palette of colors ranging from white to grey.
Kazoun's works initiate a profound questioning of the boundaries of the artwork and art practice, challenging the status of art as a privileged object. Conceived out of a desire to shift traditional methods and materials toward less concrete forms and objects.
Themes such as physical and emotional pains, anger, ecstasy, and social taboos, are the visual metaphors characterized by her work.
Kazoun’s work relates to images that are less perceptual and more mentally formulated. In experimental performances, illustrations, glass, assemblages and mixed media installations, her images migrate and transform through different vehicles of support and language, which conveys ideas or concepts to the viewer without limitations serving to share knowledge and the experience of life.
"The horror film Alien (1979, by Ridley Scott) has triggered public awareness all over the world, about human monster. The monster can be horrible, but not without beauty, and this creature, and the projection of our humanity, the part of us that we keep hidden. And maybe just a shame! In Arabic, for example, the word Ereeneh means "shadow staff" and makes the concept - as something that follows us everywhere ... But in reality and our double. The fear of our "true self" can be self-defeating, because you have to overcome in order to live, and often difficult. Then, perhaps, the secret lies in the memory: it's not in use; should not forget. I, however, I still feel guilty and I can not forget how to be: even breathe and painful to me. My discomfort leads me to the care of others ... I want to cry for all! Console them, heal them, comfort them. This is the meaning of my work: the participation of the world in my life - as a general skin, global, universal. My work and a hug. Art and childbirth, and the fabric I use and my expression in the world. I dress to exist in times and situations. My work and helpless without me: sometimes feels weak and alone. My pieces are only through sewing. And I'm happy when they feel independent, although I can not go without them - me, princess in the middle of my children." M. Kazoun
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