by Paul Zimmerman
There is something about Maya Mekira’s 3D works recently exhibited at Artifact that immediately captures our attention. It might be the result of the work’s natural exuberance, the pure contagious joy that viewers feel when confronted by her delirious imagery of balloons and various creatures. This irrepressible high-spiritedness is fueled in no small measure by Mekira’s flair for storytelling and design.
The artist’s obvious talent in her choice of presentation and surface-support materials add up to imagery which is not only a lot of fun to look at but which is also stylistically inventive. Fundamentally, the deliberative artificializing motifs in Mekira’s images of her imagined world strengthens the syncretistic aspect of her artistic efforts. That interpretation, that cultural conditioning, forces us to consider our collective desires as human beings to perpetually conjure up an ideal social and natural landscape.
The primary qualities of permanence and energy implicit in Maya Mekira’s realm of creativity are no less extraordinary than her commitment to the realm of ornamented interiors. The strongly sculptural impulse in her works make them immediately recognizable as well as intensely realized. In the artist’s world where the symbolic and the real co-incide in a profusion of engendered space. Here we see patterns that seem to spawn the great powers of figurative form and the infinite resources of the imaginary.
Paul Zimmerman is an art writer living and working in Manhattan