Maria Liebana
Medium: Mixed Media

Studio Location:
11-27 44th Road - Studio# Basement

Email: myliebana@gmail.com

Website:: www.marialiebana.com

Artist Bio:
Maria Liebana is a first-generation Latinx Interdisciplinary Artist & art educator based in Queens, New York. (born in Paterson, NJ) A Latinx artist, she embodies two cultures; however, does not feel like she fits in either community. Liebana holds a BFA in Art and Design Education from Pratt Institute and an MFA in Studio Art from Maine College of Art. She has exhibited at Field Projects, Local Project Art Space, Trestle Contemporary Art gallery, Ground Floor Gallery, and Helen Day Art Center She has partook in artist residencies: Vermont Studio Center, Vermont and Pickwick Independent Press in Portland, Maine.

Liebana is a Queens Council on the Arts New Works Grant Artist recipient for 2018.

Artist Statement:
My work is fueled by an increasing globalism and materialism in American culture as well as a search for happiness in a society predicated on these values. I am obsessed with pop motifs, media in all formats, aesthetics, and excessive consumption, and the seductive promises that these symbols offer. By scrutinizing insatiable consumer practices, I confront wealth inequality, racial and gender stereotyping, and my own disillusionment with the American dream as a first-generation Latinx artist. As part of my practice, I collect pop-culture images and thrift-store finds and reassemble them with organic, abstract forms and feminine signifiers - reclaiming these once familiar material goods to form objects with new value and meaning. And through a process of attraction and repulsion, I satisfy my personal consumerist desires, achieve a sense of empowerment, and shape my identity in a hyperconnected and materialist society.




All images and text copyright Maria Liebana