Interview with Maija Liepins for Metamorphosis 2023
I'm exhibiting work in the Lacuna International Contemporary Art Festival throughout July. Responding to interview questions, here's what I have to say about my practice this month...
Who are you and where are you from?
I’m Maija, I’m Australian, and I live in the UK. At the moment I’m visiting New Zealand where I spent my teen years. My proximity and distance; my relationship to personal landmarks has changed. Connecting with family and long-missed places, themes that are on my mind are space; physical memory; and mapping journey’s. Migrations are interlaced through my familial history.
Does this shape my practice and my desire create dynamic maps of creative life?
Tell us a bit about your practice…What do you do?
My practice is one of embodied movement, material meditation, drawing, and writing. Through improvisation and collaborative dialogue, I arrive in relationship with other beings in a way that is performative, meditative or propositional. Sometimes the dialogue is ongoing and that unfolding process is more art to me that the artifacts left behind.
How do you do it?
As part of my dialogic practice…
I create structures for conversation to support the documentation and sharing of knowledge through participation.
I create invitations
I contribute to experimental and collaborative networks
I love interviewing people about their work.
I write stream of consciousness poetry and employ automatic writing.
I practice improvisation to allow openings for collaboration.
For more information about dialogue as practice and how I do it check out my Dialogic Practice Manifesto.
When did you start?
I started working with other professional artists in 2015 in collaborative and supportive roles. My practice grew alongside this work experience. I learned about exhibiting, curating and facilitating art experiences, both as a creative practitioner and as a participant.
These opportunities came to me because I decided I was going embrace Art as a way of life, not as an add-on, parallel to ‘real world’ concerns, but as a way of living.
I was spurred on by the book Relational Aesthetics, Karad Barad’s material entanglements, and all the artists who improvised with me and embraced the live-art aspect of artwork coming into being. That really fed all our art practices and I hope will continue to do so.
Who (or what) inspires your practice?
I’m actually quite motivated to understand the creative process itself. Can I map what is universal and develop what is specific to me in my time and place? Within that exploration is a growing understanding of the importance of space and spaciousness for the human body and the creative mind.
I find I am exploring consciousness itself, and how it relates to creative visions, actions and materialisations. I desire to connect to my body, my thoughts, my imagination, and my world and not get lost in the external demands of what to do, and think and emulate. I seek a freedom of response in order to be sure when my actions are chosen not conditioned, creative, not conformist.
Time in nature; words and ideas; and space to play.
These things give me the oxygen my practice breathes.
What are you exhibiting at Metamorphosis 2023?
In 2018 I started collecting video on my mobile phone during walks in nature and layering them together to express a multi-dimensional experience of life, both internal and external, physical and ephemeral.
The third video I made in 2019-2020 will be exhibited during Lacuna Festivals International Contemporary Art festival 1-30 July. The video is called Transmutation 14:44.
How does it link to this years theme for the festival, Metamorphosis?
Metamorphosis means ‘a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one.’ In zoology it refers to the change in insects from one distinct juvenile form to a completely different adult form such a caterpillar to butterfly. So the word has roots in the natural world. My artwork is a series of layered moving images that last 14min and 44sec. The meditative and elemental experience takes you through a sequence of air and water, fire and water, fire and earth, earth and air… and in the dialogue between these things, meanings are made, and a portal to transmutation is opened. Transmutation, is an elemental term such as the idea of turning lead into gold but also has a spiritual connotations. I believe the word makes more sense when the material and spiritual dimensions are understood as entangled, not as distinctly separate things.
Where can people find out more?
For more about me and my work, please follow on
Instagram @maijaliepins
Website: maija.co.uk
I am also writing on substack, you can find my publication at substack.dreamtender.co.uk
Why did you apply for Metamorphosis 2023?
My main reason for applying was because I had some work that fit the theme. But I’m also proud to be part of this Lacuna Festival because of its grass-roots ethos.
I also recognise what an important thing it is for an artist, to build real-world connections with artists all over the world. This is a fun way of coming together for mutual promotion and sharing of art. Thank you to the tiny team that makes it all possible, and if you’re watching this and want to help out, I think the team of volunteers is in need of growing some members to sustain the festival as it grows. Check out the Lacuna Festivals instagram if you’re interested in volunteering next year. If you’d rather support with a donation, check out the GoFundMe on their website.
Now about the video…
From blowy winter nights, hot baths, and muddy paths to forest dancing, sun in my eyes, in dew drops, in ice-crowns... be scratched, smoothed, ruffled and enticed by these layered moving images...
Transmutation
Get comfortable, adjust your lighting, and join me for an elemental exploration in the English countryside.