MARIA-TEODORA PÎRJOL

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Maria-Teodora Pîrjol (b.2005 Iasi, Romania) is a multidisciplinary artist who currently lives in the United Kingdom. Drawing from her cultural heritage, personal memories and the collective experience of the modern individual, her work questions the foundations of religion, capitalism, and patriarchy, particularly through questioning what the term "deviance" means in a societal and political context. 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 a certain 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. 

Maria believes that the spirit within is more powerful and uncontrollable than we have been made to believe by the rigid society that the majority of us have experienced. Exploring this power, her work proposes deviance as a strategy rather than its institutional definition of immorality, her main example being the witch hunts of the Middle Ages, theorised in her art within relation to two opposing forces: the natural world and state control. 

What has been normalised is not what is normal.