P.O.T.C.P.S.Sv, 2022
Humor, poetry, drawing, performance and ceramics allow Mara to draw unexpected lines between culture and acculturation, the search for meaning and absurdity, gravity and derision, traditional tales and contemporary stories. For her collages, she rescues 60s and 90s-era magazines from the trash, where the old printing style gives her compositions a slightly dated quality. With great mischief, she subverts these nondescript images from the post-war boom, provoking accidents and the absurd, while also revealing what is crawling underneath the surface of these mainstream representations, seen time and again in our childhoods, and which suddenly abound until reaching a point of saturation. Her bulimic relationship to images –indeed a symptom of our time – gives rise to mutant and often hilarious regurgitations.
(Extract from the text written by Colline Grosjean)
© Isabelle Meister (portrait)
© Thomas Maisonnasse
Mara Krastiņa was born in Riga, Latvia in 1984. Since completing her “Work Master” degree at HEAD (Haute École d’Art et Design, Geneva, CH), she has explored contemporary folklore through drawing, collage, ceramics, and sound art. Much of her work is site-specific and transitory, involving sound performances, radiophonic events (LapTopRadio, NANA, Massicot, Vegan 2000, Flower Clock) and live concerts. Her work often focusses on direct exchanges with her audience: a spontaneous immediacy that translates into her visual work. She performs as a musician, notably playing bass in Massicot: a post-punk, trans-tropical female trio formed with Simone Aubert and Colline Grosjean. She is also involved in publishing projects through the collective Les Chiens Fous, which she co-founded with other visual artists.
Instagram @mara_krastina
Window display: courtesy of MAH - Musée d’art et d’histoire
Mara Krastina
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