Maria Toumazou
Maria Toumazou’s work is predominantly sculptural, though exploring other disciplines and perspectives as an artistic practice is focal. She is interested in the moment where found forms open up to alternative usage frameworks, shaping objects, materials, and situations through creative processes that are informed by site and biography. Literary forms – such as realism and its attention to the everyday – serve as a methodology for constructing narratives across and within works. Histories and cultures are also revealed in their material facture, unraveling tensions in chronology and circular references that frequently pull from various design eras. Her process-led practice binds together delicate narratives with industry, mechanics, and adhoc inventions employing subjective gestures to manifest opposition to dominant economical structures. Elsewhere, shifting the role of artist as creator, designer, or documenter, Toumazou has created collective projects which stand as independent modes of production: Neoterismoi Toumazou (a project space and art collective with a programme that brought together poetry, performance, music, fashion and object-art) MARIA†. Editions (an independent publishing imprint based between Nicosia and New York) and Metafora (a Cypriot furniture retailer with a focus on postmodern design).
Past Presentations
2021 – Coil, Hot Wheels Athens, Athens, GR (solo)
2020 – Condo Complex London hosted at Corvi Mora & greengrassi, London, UK (group)
2019 – Hypersurfacing, curated by Marina Christodoulidou, NiMAC, Nicosia, CY (group)
2018 – Fair-face Elysée, off-site project, curated by Peter Eramian, Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia, CY (solo)
2017 – Soft stone documents, curated by Jan Verwoert, Opening of the Limassol Municipal Arts Centre – Apothikes Papadaki, Limassol, CY (group)
Publications
2022 – Maria Toumazou: ΔΑΝΕΙKH – BORROWED, Nicosia (forthcoming)
2022 – Scrap Book, Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia
2021 – Umm Kulthum faints on stage, edited by Polys Peslikas and Jan Verwoert, Sternberg Press,Berlin (Neoterismoi Toumazou)
2016 – Gee, Maria Editions, Nicosia
2014 – Maria†Maria†.doxc., with Marysia Gacek, Maria Editions, Nicosia