IN THE STUDIO: Maria Stamati

Starting with new works by artists, that are on exhibition or that are work in progress … we are visiting their studios, interacting with them and we present you… this journey. The reason we met Maria Stamati is is the new series of artworks that is working in this period, using completely different materials on the canvas of what we had become accustomed to, since with the yarns embroiders a new path, a new journey, full of experiences, questions, concerns and positions, in this journey she guides us and narrates us …

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Maria Stamati Archive

We note that in your new artworks, many new elements are used. How from the pure painting, result yarns and the embroidery on canvas?
Yes, in this new series there are new elements, which are the yarns and the creation process. I have presented many works with pure painting but also video and installations. When concerns me an idea, a thought, I try to study it visually and to express myself, the important thing is the, as much as possible, enhanced imprinting of the self-examination and questions. The methods and the materials are the means to complete representation and expression and of course a serious piece of the work. Experimentation and research are a need for the artist and in most cases the agony to express the reflection, finds or creates a way that will convey the quest.
We know that the black and white is the color combination that represents you. How arising all these colors and what need covering?
Βlack and white are two solid energies that contain and contained in everything. They relate and concern me, as the driving force that is the starting point and the destination simultaneously. We can say a lot about black and white, but some other time. At this stage of my life, conciliation with color emerged as necessity of conversation, with no less cerebral regions, but with more experiential and small. Black and white are a-sized meanings. Color has edges, has horizons, moving but still visible. This makes it intimate, emotional, pulsating therefore alive. Blossoms and warms everyday life with many adjectives.
Despite, that in some of your artworks, you use elements from history, culture and tradition of embroidery of various regions without your iconography, to coincide with them, but the artistic effect is totally identified with a modern glossary.
We are our memories. As long as the line does not interrupted, the more truth contained in our present. The dialogue that develops between elements of tradition and a modern artistic language is an essential approach of our course through time.
What role-plays the white in the canvas, the void and the occupied as thought and spawn of ideas?
The white canvas, in this work, calls for writing and convenes to the creation of the experienced dense moments.
These works, although involving an indoor track, since you initially have used and sharp objects – elements that afterwards remove them, are very bright and shiny. Does this procedure works like salvation, liberation and transubstantiation?
I use embroidery as the work creation process, because the way it is done is slow, methodical, totally focused. The needle is sharp object that pierces, drives and embroiders. Embroidery is the clean imprinting of time stitch by stitch is visible his path. The moment is illustrated and only her the awareness of makes everything bright.
Through your new works, we see the necessity of the contemporary artist to return to familiar places. Tracing new methodologies, considerations and anguishes, are you looking for this return and its redefinition?
I do not like the word return. Even the visit in familiar places is a new approach with a new experience. If there is Ithaca, is not where we started from, is the new places that we have to go. In the new places that we have to discover.
At this time, more than the past, more and more artists use traditional methods to express themselves. The redefinition at the roots of women’s pursuit through art, do you thing that arises out from the crisis?
I respected and respect the past. However, I think that artists, whatever method they use, at times, they do it to discover the new, to learn about the future. They prefer, even the delusion of unexplored, than the returning to locus. The crisis, shocked us and brought us unexpected twists, but the art is trying to open pathways, to we go in life and in the world and to “see” each other.