BIO

Maria Constanza Ferreira (b. 1994, Caracas, Venezuela) is a multimedia artist based in Santa Barbara, CA. She is currently one of the four founding residents at SBAXIS, a new incubator for artists in Santa Barbara. In 2019 and 2020, Ferreira was awarded a residency in the chemistry laboratory of the Kahr Research Group at New York University, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the Kahr Group. In 2020 Ferreira was the recipient of the GLAS Animation Festival Grant, the singular grant of its kind for independent animators in the US, in addition to receiving nominations for Vimeo’s Best of the Year in the “Experimental Category”. She recieved a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Film/Animation/Video and Graphic Design.

LINK TO CV

I am interested in the imperceptible, such as images, objects, materials, and natural phenomena that are irrelevant in every-day life or that are so prevalent, they become unseen. My works draw attention to these entities and expand beyond their cultural and historical narratives through a process of reimagination. My multimedia art practice incorporates video, installation, photography, and various forms of fine art and digital media. In my practice, I interact with technology as an extension of the body and utilize scientific imaging techniques as tools in my quest to visualize the invisible. Working with machines such as satellites, microscopes, scanners, and computers, I search for spaces invisible to the naked eye while examining the body’s relationship to nature and technology. I am drawn to the way advances in scientific and technological fields have altered human’s conceptualization of the world, often resulting in disembodied perceptions of the environment. Emanating from a desire to understand the material world and the significance of existence, I became fascinated with the fundamental process of growth and creation in the natural world.

Through my work with crystallography, I examine the self-generative properties of synthetic crystals– fascinating objects that are able to build themselves into being. Experimenting with the interaction between crystals and light, I began to consider light as a tangible medium. In exploring the body’s visual relationship with light and its physiological limitations, I conceptualized new artistic experiences by utilizing tools that could surpass the eye's capabilities. My works dealing with light embodies the relativity of color and expands upon the idea of color as a fragile artistic concept. In my practice, I experiment with the integration of light, movement, time, sound, and space to construct unfamiliar modes of representation by deliberately blurring the line between the physical and the abstract – ultimately offering unconventional ways of seeing and new perspectives. Through a course of continuous fragmentation, destruction, displacement, and evolution, my works are products of abstraction where the imagery becomes strange to the viewer, including myself.