Maryia Virshych

Maryia Virshych has a background in architecture, space and product design, and craft, all of which inform her current work. She has held creative positions at several design and art studios in Barcelona. In 2019, she started her own artistic practice, Virmary, working primarily with clay.
Maryia has received numerous awards, including the Design Award from the Royal Society of Art and the Residency Award from Domaine de Boisbuchet. She has exhibited her work in various collective exhibitions, such as CICA Museum in Gimpo, Thrown Gallery in London, Site Brooklyn in New York City, Palais Galerie in Neuchâtel, Hangar in Barcelona, Sala d’Art Jove in Barcelona, and Cluster Crafts in London, among others.
The primary source for the “Terra Cognita” series is aerial footage of isolated lands. From the distance of a space satellite and without context, it is impossible to distinguish a mining quarry from a desert valley or an extraction site from a salt flat—both look desolate and mesmerising. “Terra Cognita” dismantles hierarchies. The works in the series document traces of natural phenomena side by side, regardless of their origin, as part of a new and ever-changing ecosystem, and explore how landscape as a genre in the history of art evolves to reflect the complex relationships between humans and nature.
Reproducing satellite images in clay gives materiality and a sense of closeness to terrains that are completely out of reach for most people. Framed and hung on the wall, within touching distance, they seem to claim, ‘I was here,’ allowing viewers to become familiar with the unknowable.