“Artist Maria Merfeld dives into the depths of the Caspian Sea, into the murmur of waves carrying memories of her childhood in Baku, Azerbaijan, during the Communist era of the 1960s. Through a multidisciplinary body of work, Maria sets down her memories in ink and marker on paper, and etches onto wood images born from her heart’s scars.
In the series The Red Journey, dense etchings of fine vertical and horizontal lines give rise to images of fish, nets, flying boats, bulls, and mummified archetypal figures evoking mythical sea voyages. Dwelling in the depths is the colossal Beluga, the Great Mother, the nourisher, whose roe was a daily staple in the artist’s family home. The beluga sturgeon can live for up to a century and thus embodies an ancient memory carrying tales of the sea and journeys past, alongside the artist’s own story and her complex relationship with her mother. From a Freudian perspective, the beluga dwells on the ocean floor of the subconscious, the most primal, profound, and elusive of images, reachable only by diving into the murky waters of childhood. In the work The Great Mother, Maria renders the beluga on paper using a perforation technique: light streams through the tiny holes, and there she is, radiant, bathed in precious light, accompanied by a cello melody and the murmur of the sea (with musical inspiration from Azerbaijan; cello and composition by Mayo Shviro).
In other works, Maria reels up further memories. In Three Wishes, a metal-embossed triptych, goldfish appear in all their beauty, clustered densely, as if just netted by fishermen: a golden mass symbolizing hope for the granting of heartfelt wishes. The vertical wooden skewers, by contrast, echo the restrictive, halting rhythm of the oil rig towers. Maria’s one wish of the goldfish: to understand her mother, what was missing, what was once, and the question of love.
Yet the wish goes unanswered. Her memories remain hazy, and in the series Disappearance, the image of oil rigs gradually fades: beginning as a clear pencil drawing and ending in an amorphous blur, a visual expression of a vanished memory. The towering oil rigs of Baku, from whose chimneys wafted the stench of “black gold,” mingled with the salty tang of the sea, the sensation of soft sand mixed with tar clinging to her small feet, all these, the distant and recent past, the squalor and the beauty, linger in Maria’s consciousness as persistent memories, hovering between tangible reality and the realm of fiction or illusion, like the body of a fish slipping between fingers, refusing to be grasped. The exhibition continues Maria’s ongoing engagement with journeys, migration, displacement, and the mother daughter bond. A personal lexicon of concepts and shapes inspired by memories, ancient cultures, folklore, and fantasy. An inner mosaic woven into consciousness where sights, scents, and experiences merge into one.”
curator: Nurit Tal-Tenne
