MARIA KATYANOVA

Maria Katyanova is a Saint Petersburg–based visual artist whose practice spans painting and sculptural experimentation. Working at the intersection of dreams, memory, and material reality, her work reflects on identity formation within a world saturated by mass production and the relentless circulation of images. She examines how personal subjectivity is shaped by global systems of consumption, and how archetypal visual languages continue to exert quiet yet persistent influence on the inner life.

Drawing from everyday observations and personal recollections, her practice engages both individual and collective memory. Through collage-like strategies, she brings together fragments of the mundane with cultural symbols and timeless signs, allowing the unreal to surface within ordinary experience. These layered compositions become sites where past and present overlap, revealing emotional residues tied to childhood narratives and inherited histories.

Her process is materially hybrid, combining painting with metal casting to construct works that move beyond the two-dimensional plane. This expansion into sculptural form enables her to explore how memory, emotion, and temporality intertwine within the psyche. By embedding images in physical depth and weight, she articulates the persistence of the past in shaping perception, emphasizing how internal worlds are continuously informed by accumulated experiences.

Born in Angarsk, Russia, the artist received her formal training at the Repin Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg, where she graduated from the Faculty of Painting. She currently lives and works in Saint Petersburg, where her practice continues to investigate the fragile boundary between reality and imagination, and the subtle mechanisms through which identity is constructed in an age of mass culture.