Mariana Noreña G – SAIC Graduate Exhibition 2023

SAIC SHOWS 2023 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Graduates

SAIC SHOWS 2023 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Mariana Noreña G

Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Fiber and Material Studies

Graduate Exhibition Two (May)

mariana.norenag@gmail.com

Mariana Noreña is a multidisciplinary artist from Bogotá, Colombia. Her work is inspired by intimate moments with nature and how her mind and body react to the landscape she inhabits. It’s a diary of emotions, thoughts, personal connections and her own here and now. The gestures of the landscape and the superimposition of her own compose abstract pieces made with mostly natural materials.

She graduated from la Universidad de Los Andes, from where she holds two degrees, one in Design and another in Fine Arts with emphasis in painting and drawing, in connection to which she received a meritorious distinction on her thesis project. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Fiber and Material Studies department at the School of Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Colombia such as “La Feria del Millon” and “Panorama,” among others. Her work was recently part of the Museo Bolivariano of Contemporary Art collection and she was part of the finalists’ exhibition for Luminarts Cultural Foundation in Chicago.

Mariana Noreña G - Untitled (Lake Michigan)

Untitled (Lake Michigan), Silk, black beans, indigo, ceramic beads, paper and cotton thread. 2022

Mariana Noreña G - Corazón Arrugado / Shrinking Heart

Corazón Arrugado / Shrinking Heart, Wooden veneers and disassembled leaf. 2021

Shadows and Thoughts, 2022. Ceramic sculptures and video projection

I constantly think of the landscape as human: an anatomical body that feels and has gestures. It is in these gestures and the superimposition of my own where I like to think my work is found. In the process of creating, I seek to cancel the distractions that drag daily life to isolate the natural or urban landscape that surrounds me and myself as one, allowing space for peace and curiosity, change, experimentation and to find my own personal landscapes.

In this slow and mindful contemplation exercise, I have tried to give power to the intangibles inside me that arise because of my own questioning. I try to empower the feelings, memories, and thoughts that come to me to transform them into textures, patterns, sculptural bodies, and colors and shapes. In this process, the representation of these intangibles has become a diary of emotions and thoughts, of personal connections and of my own here and now.

By using materials that are mainly natural or have a nature that is constantly in flux, the work takes on a life of its own. They are ephemeral and at the same time conditioned to a form and language belonging to my body.

Since moving to Chicago, I have found myself questioning recurrently the meaning of “belonging” and what I call “home.” I explore the answer in the process of meditating and being mindful of the landscape that surrounds me and that is within me.

I thought about this piece as a way of inviting you into my home—to this introspective space and moment where my creativity lives and to surrender into the possibility of discovering your own home. As you stand on the two lands that I now call home, I invite you to be lulled by the sound of the tree that gives shade to my house, to smell the rosemary planted in my garden in Colombia, and feel the undeniable way of adapting and being in constant motion of Lake Michigan.