Using the body as a point of departure, Maria Westmar explores how seemingly solid materials and rigid entities can be ascribed movement and change by understanding them relationally. The materials play a meaning-bearing role in her artistic process which, together with the idea, leads the process forward. In working with the stone, the textile, the sand and the foam rubber, she asks herself if they are in motion. Whether the materials are alive or dead and whether they have agency. Through sculpture, installation, text, image and in collaborative projects, Maria Westmar processes and investigates questions related to the body, materiality, life, origins and the sensuous.
Maria Westmar (b. 1983) lives and works in Malmö. She holds a MFA from Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. Westmar has made exhibitions and collaborative works that have been shown on, amongst other places, Konstepidemin, Göteborg (2024), Sjöbo Konsthall, Sjöbo (2023), Inter Art Center, Malmö (2022) and Krognoshuset, Lund (2019). Her work has been awarded several grants including working grants from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, Ester Lindahl's travel grant and grants from Malmö Art Museum as well as The Royal Art Academy.