KNITTING ISOLATION OUT

Through the process of knitting Maria brings up childhood memories and meditative ritual of the repeated movement. "Knitting isolation out" starts with a story of the artist's quarantine isolation and expands to some more fundamental issues such as imposed gender roles and finding one's authentic self in the context of everchanging world around us. Constant mathematic rythm of knitting loops accumulates and evolves into patchwork of soft shapes telling a touching story about what it means to be a human being.

"This is my series of posters - a study of my inexplicable hobby for knitting in quarantine for others and, at first, even for me. This particular series was created during almost 1 year of the quarantine, which was close to house arrest in terms of its severity in Latvia. The reincarnation of a child's love for threads, knitting needles and the only form of mathematical calculations I love - the mathematics of knitting loops - is, it seems to me, an unconscious form of self-therapy, an adaptation to the reality of closed boundaries." - Maria Gvardeitseva

Maria draws her narrative line through installations, mixed media pieces and video art. The project was exposed in the National Center of Contemporary Art in Minsk from December 16th 2021 to January 24th 2022.