Born in Athens in 1988, with a constant desire to study art since she was little, left for Spain when she was 22, where she completed her Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts and years later her Master´s in Montessori education & adolescence psychology. After ten creative years in Spain, Marina for the past three years has been creating and living in France between Grenoble and Paris. Her art has a direct connection with literature and poetry, declaring intensity, raw sexuality, sensibility and constant contemplation while navigating through figurative abstraction and unrefined portraits. Her art has been exhibited in different places around the world and Marina is actively engaged with the theoretical part of art, creating workshops, seminars and teaching how to use art as a metalanguage to achieve sublimation. It's a delight to have crossed paths with Marina and to engage in collaboration for our exhibition, "Hiverid Mind."
Below, you'll discover an interview that offers a deeper insight into her artistic endeavors and captivating personality.
How would you describe your art in five words?
Visceral, disruptive, sensitive, contemplative, atmospheric
Does your art discuss topics on womanhood and trauma? If so, where do you get your inspiration from?
I started exploring womanhood in a very early step of my career and the beginning was a big question mark for me. It was more like an exploration towards a very abstract part of myself which is very funny listening to myself saying this now that womanhood is such a
strong motor of my entire wild nature and my creative identity. In the early years of my career, I was trying to establish territory and find my pack while at the same time, I wanted to represent the difficulty of being in one´s body with certainty and pride regardless of the body´s gifts and limitations. And to be honest with you, it took me many years to achieve this.
Seeking inspiration at the right place is something that nobody teaches you (that’s why I have dedicated my seminars to this now!) Achieve with your art to speak and act on your behalf, to be aware, alert, and to find what you belong to, to rise with dignity, retain as much consciousness as possible and to talk about topics that are considered ´heavy´ is a choice and indeed, if you want to stay truthful to your principal intentions as a creator you need to open the right channels of inspiration. When it comes to womanhood, my inspiration can be interpersonal, intrapersonal and literary. My latest series ’Madonnas’ for example was about contemporary motherhood and the inspiration came from the 3 channels mentioned above. It was talking about every day and not-everyday women, that have chosen not to be defined by their destiny but by what they have achieved.
My next project will explore trauma, freedom and healing and it´s going to be about witches and goddesses and the character of La Maga (Hopscotch, J.Cortazar) which represents the freedom and the lack, the two biggest pillars of our contemporary womanhood. I have already started my research about this topic, a research based on famous and infamous stories, books, writings, memories and experiences of other women but of course, if I intend to talk about trauma, I want and need to include my personal survival story, how I managed to overcome the huge posttraumatic trauma of a femicide attempt, and in what way a woman who has lived something that disruptive and brutal, something that has left her with a huge physical and psychical scar is able to reconnect with her wild nature and come back stronger than ever.
Which is your Artists Top-3 and who is the artist that has inspired your work more?
well…Top three(S) are so so difficult for me!ahahah In which discipline? When it comes to painting for sure Francisco Farreras is at my top 3 together with Mark Rothko, mostly because of the Stendhal that I experience each time I see their art in person. My relationship with those two painters is completely visceral, I really feel that they have created something out of this world. Then of course how can I not put Leonora Carrington in my top 3, the moment that I started studying her work and her writings I felt so aligned to her ideas, beliefs and way of living and at the same time I realised that art can take an entirely different path, way more explosive, limitless and sublimatory, especially for women. But I would rather give you a top ten.Now there is only one artist who has inspired my work and my way of thinking more than anyone else and that is the writer Julio Cortazar. For me, there is nothing that can be compared to him, each time I want to open a dialogue with aesthetics, conceptualization or deontology in my art, I have to re-open a dialogue with the writings of Cortazar.
What advice would you give to other young women out there?
You have to be better than men because you will never be favoured. You have to find ways to work less and be more efficient even though you have been raised to work hard and constantly, this shouldn´t be the norm. Read, read a lot. Trust your gut, ask for help openly, establish strong connections with other women, and make a network and a safety net. Men have been raised to celebrate every single victory, every little success of their path, on the contrary, we always tend to minimise our achievements because we are always too busy with the next ones, too occupied with our families, too in love, too in despair, too humble, too deconcentrated, too overworked trying to succeed in this rigid and mannish scene that we never open the fucking champaign! We always think ´Not now, not this one, maybe the next one will be bigger´. No man will do it for you, no man will celebrate your victory, so find the bloody time (ten minutes, a day, a week, a morning) and open this champaign, do your little victory dance, have a cry full of joy, make a fuss. You are not working so much just to be in sanctuaries of peace and rest, and even in your biggest success, in your most glorious moment, there will always be someone to remind you of the things that you are not good at, so you have to choose your fight. If you want to transcend, your creations must spring from freedom and give value and necessity to whatever you touch, so do not let them define you and patronise you by your nature. But be aware that in the society that we are living in, women unfortunately still need to choose which dream they want to live, so choose wisely. And fight for it for as long as it still represents your true self.
If you met your 10-year-younger self, what advice would you give her? Also, ten years ago, would you have seen your life going as it goes now?
What advice would I give to the 25 y. o. Marina? You are not your mother, or your grandmother and you do not represent a lineage of suffering women, so stop living under the fear of failure, the fear of ageing, the fear of solitude. You do not carry the responsibility of taking care of everyone and solving everything. So say ‘no’ more often, use your time more wisely and do not marry this man ahahahhaah. Also, eat the fucking ice cream, get lost sometimes and flirt with the gym guy. You are not fat, volatile or a slut. You are just fiery and alive… life is too short.
Where do you see yourself in 1, 5 and 10 years?
Hopefully in TATE modern!! ( laughts). No, but seriously, TATE or MOMA would be amazing. I see myself painting in 1, 5, 10 and 20 years. Sculpturing as well. I definitely want to be even more evolved with the theoretical part of art. I have this fiery desire of teaching to so many people how they can find inspiration in their everyday life, and how art can be healing and elevating. I see myself working more with people in need, people with traumas. But also I see myself running an international bookstore with exquisite and extremely well-curated books somewhere next to the sea. I would love to continue living in France but for sure want to do more things in Greece. Just to clarify, TATE and the bookstore can totally co-exist.
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All artworks and photographs copywrites belong to Marina Tziara.
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