Ss3 — CLOISTRAL: Marija Tiurina

HAARLEM | Illustrating the fascinating tension between the familiar and the fantastic

Throughout January, Studio Sessions explores the balancing act between isolation and community with a series entitled CLOISTRAL

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WORDS BY REBECCA DAVISON-MORA

Marija Tiurina

Marija Tiurina knows better than most what it means to exist in the in-between. Born in Lithuania as the USSR was disintegrating, an innate understanding of liminality permeates her expansive watercolours. Illustrating worlds that straddle both the familiar and the fantastic, her work offers gentle contradictions wherein isolation and togetherness perpetually converge.

In her watercolour print Working Remotely, a forest acts as a cabin. Full of mythical creatures, sprouting vegetables, druids, and frogs, a computer plug connects to a tree, and multiple scenes of domesticity present themselves in varying degrees of the fantastical. There is a hum to the work as various creatures go about their day, echoing the neighbours of an apartment complex. A computer screen aptly reads “AWAY” as its protagonist enters this world that is ‘outside’ though radiating interiority. It’s a reminder of how the hum of urban life has us plugged in and yet slightly apart from the happenings right beside us.

Studio Space - Marija T

In other works, like Mind the Gap, the influence of video game design is present in the contrasting scenes of parallel worlds. Underworlds mesh with those above, loosely held together by disembodied hands and naked tree trunks. Commuters hold onto a centipede-like creature, while paper boats delicately float down a canal. The 73 bus to Stoke Newington looks like it may fall down below, and one can feel the force of a city full of interior lives─and the loneliness that can ensue.

For Tiurina, this exemplifies her desire to explore the ways we co-exist within both natural and urban settings. In her own studio, she requires natural light and collects natural ephemera to bring the outside in. Surrounded by things that do not belong, her own built environment merges the mystical with the mundane. Spurred by the pandemic, she observes how we are not always in the spaces we wish to be in, and describes the longing that comes with wanting to be everywhere all at once.

Her fascination with this tension speaks to our desire for multiple realities and the complexities of life, inviting us to reflect on the connections and disconnections that make up the hours in a day. A welcome mediation in an anxious world, Tiurina’s work manages to balance a tightrope of clarity and confusion.