About Mariah

Multidisciplinary artist with 15+ years of experience in the fields of art. Grounded in Eastern European cultural heritage, my practice examines war, collective and cultural trauma, and power dynamics, tracing how these forces manifest in the subtle micro-narratives of personal and everyday experience.
An interview with Mariah led by Carlo Borloni


The physical diary as a necessary gesture, what does it mean for you to transform spontaneous doodles into a physical diary at a time when everything tends to become digital?
Doodling into a physical diary is a way of resisting total digitization. I always carry a sketchbook, never an iPad, because gestures through a screen feel limited and artificial. Digital interfaces blur reality, making us cyborgs detached from our own actions. My visual diary is an intimate and tactile space of healing, something a screen could never be. Doodling on paper is a small performance of presence, an honest connection between hand, page, and thought that a digital device can never replicate. I love not having an undo option, once a visual note is down, it stays. There’s no post-production, no corrections. This rawness is what makes it truthful and intimate, capturing the momentum of thought as it happens.


Randomness as emotional truth, you describe these works as “sincere and random.” How does randomness become a tool for authenticity in your creative process?
Randomness is a chaotic structure that resists capture or categorization, and in that very resistance lies its rebellious power. In the drawing process, this quality is, for me, an artist’s greatest asset: it acts like a private key or a fingerprint: unique, unrepeatable, and belonging entirely to one individual. Much like in cryptography, where randomisation is crucial for security, the unpredictable nature of random marks becomes a source of authenticity and creative freedom.


Neurosis as a visual language, you refer to neuroses as mechanisms for regulating the chaos of contemporary life. What forms do these neuroses take within your imagery?
Neurosis appears in my work as a visual language of fragmentation and pressure. Its structural condition of contemporary life, shaped by surveillance, technology, and social expectations. Neurotic lives in a split between what they want and what they are required to be. In my imagery, neuroses take the form of distorted bodies, torn identities, unstable first-person perspectives, and figures fractured by the forces acting upon them. These are not psychological portraits but traces of the tension between desire and imposed roles. Through these neurotic forms, I reveal how identity destabilizes and how subtle violences of everyday life inscribe themselves onto the body and gaze.


Deciding alongside technology, you write that emotions are no longer entirely our own, but mediated by algorithms. When did you first perceive this interference, and how has it shaped your practice?
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I first noticed this interference, and that’s precisely its nature. Technology mediates aspects of our lives so subtly that it feels natural, almost invisible. We live within this reality, and my work becomes a way of reflecting on it.
While these doodles are all physical, they are later translated and adapted for digital display, mirroring how our identities are constantly filtered through technology. I see the shift from physical to digital not just as a technical step, but as a parallel to how we continually adapt ourselves to the digital realm. When a physical drawing becomes data, it becomes an entirely new object, a second life of the work, shaped by the medium that now hosts it, such as screen, interface or a platform.


The boundary between human and posthuman, your collection explores violence, cognitive disorder, and mortality. Where do you place human identity today within an increasingly posthuman world?
I see identity today as fundamentally unstable, stretched between its organic reality and the technological forces that continuously shape, monitor, and evaluate us. We’re pressured to perform stable roles while living under metrics, notifications, and algorithmic surveillance that turn the self into a constantly regulated project.In this posthuman condition, where everything tends toward neutrality, abstraction, and digitization, I’m drawn to the harsh, painful realities that become increasingly hidden. These are pushed into the background of public discourse, yet they are more present than ever in the individual psyche. I deliberately bring these themes back into visibility. They should remind us of the fragile, and chaotic aspects of being human. In a world drifting toward the posthuman, these raw experiences become anchors, exposing what cannot be fully absorbed or erased by technological mediation.


The doodle is an unconscious act, a doodle often emerges as an automatic gesture. What surfaces when your hand moves before your thoughts? And what do you choose to hold back or censor?
I like this question because a diary is expected to reveal everything, the most intimate, the most unfiltered. And yet, within the context of the platforms where it’s presented, that full honesty is never fully possible. I don’t show pages with explicit sexuality or raw violence simply because those are the things that platforms punish. That censorship already exposes a certain hypocrisy: the very spaces where we are encouraged to “express ourselves” are also the ones that dictate the limits of that expression. So I’ll be honest: in that sense, this project can never be completely honest in this medium. Certain pages and narratives simply can’t exist here, and they remain reserved only for my offline audience.
But what it can really show is the intimacy of the artistic process. This is a diary, whether the drawing is finished or not, whether it’s “good” or “bad,” whether it’s uncomfortably personal. I try to let everything surface in this quick-drawing process, all the painful stories, honest gestures and mind processes are visible. These doodles are unburdened by aesthetics, expectations, or narrative structure. It’s a record of impulses rather than conclusions, and that rawness is what makes it true.


The absurdities of everyday life, what is a minimal, almost invisible detail from your daily life that becomes recurrent or obsessive within your work?
Life itself is an absurdity. Human decisions are absurd, the structures we live in are absurd, even the fact that we must work to survive is absurd. Once you begin to look at the world through a questioning lens, the smallest details start to reveal their strangeness.
Recognising these awkward movements, little glitches in daily behavior inspires me. They’re the moments where something irrational or uncomfortable surfaces for just a second. Those moments say a lot about our condition, and for me it's enough to note them down in my visual diaries, I don’t need a grand narrative.


Internalized violence, in your pieces, violence feels more internal than external. Where does this energy originate for you, and how does it transform into a visual mark?
Internalized violence and terror comes from our neurotic tensions that structures contemporary subjectivity. It’s the pressure of expectations, the constant self-monitoring, and the conflict between desire and imposed roles. Really all forces that shape the inner life rather than acting outwardly. The internalized violence, inner agony, self-destruction, and suffering is translated into visual marks, creating figures and gestures that embody the psychic and bodily strain of living under these pressures alongside with their borderline behaviors, and distorted visions of the space.


Reality vs. imagination, you speak of “blurred boundaries between real and imagined.” How does this slippage manifest in your aesthetic and formal decisions?
Everything I draw is a commentary on reality and subversion of true stories. Sometimes I capture the absurdities I encounter, and sometimes I exaggerate reality until it becomes absurd. My works play with how our inner states constantly rewrite the world we think we see. Formally, this appears through distortions of bodies, faces, and space. I use these disruptions to reflect a subjective vision, how anxiety, desire, or tension bend perception. Certain surreal traits recur across my characters because they represent specific stereotypes or pressures: “boot legs” as a feminist commentary on obedient, disciplined bodies; “forced smiles” as learned masks that conceal internal chaos; “exaggerated motion” to express the relentless speed and extraction of contemporary capitalist life; those threatening “evil hands”,’ always reaching, always wanting are an embodiment of the consuming. I aim to show how every part of the body is pressured, reshaped, or wounded according to the demands of capitalism and how it becomes a site of adaptation, exploitation, and quiet suffering.


Adapting the physical to the digital, your doodles are physical but intended for digital display. What is the biggest challenge, or the most surprising advantage, of this dual nature?
The challenges depend on the intention. If the goal is to preserve the same message in both worlds, the most difficult part is making sure the drawing carries the same emotional weight when viewed through a screen. The digital surface flattens texture, scale, and presence, so certain nuances can easily be lost.
But there are also real advantages. Once the drawing enters the digital space, it can be manipulated, remixed, or transformed into countless variations with minimal intervention. Even a simple photograph of the work has the potential to become a new piece, a reinterpretation shaped by lighting, lens, resolution, or context.

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