MARIA-TEODORA PÎRJOL

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Maria-Teodora Pîrjol (b.2005 Iasi, Romania) is a multidisciplinary artist who currently lives in the United Kingdom. She recently graduated from Leeds Arts University with a Bachelors in Fine Art, during which she also completed a semester at The Hungarian University of Fine Arts. 

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Her cultural heritage, personal memory and the modern collective experience inform her work, which questions the foundations of religion, capitalism, and patriarchy. She does this particularly through exploring what the term "deviance" means in a societal and political context, testing her theories through activist action and collaborative fundraising.

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Alternating between painting, sculpture, photography and video, she positions the body into fluid spaces that challenge modern perceptions of 'womanhood', and more widely that of a 'normal' human existence. Her compositions transfer an unspoken struggle from the spiritual world to the material through symbolic imagery, textures and figurative contortions which are achieved through photographic preparation. It is the same case for her video work, which presents a challenging sensory exploration of realities. 

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Her work proposes deviance as a strategy of systemic confrontation rather than its institutional definition of immorality, with her main example being the witch hunts of the Middle Ages. This is theorised in her art in relation to two opposing forces: the natural world and state control. 

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