Maria Blom
A Good Listener. A Bad Listener.

Exhibition opening: 25th September / 17:00 ARV.I Studio in Vishovgrad

Welcome to the exhibition, titled A Good Listener. A Bad Listener, by Maria Blom. The exhibition is the conclusion of her artist residency at ARV.I in Vishovgrad, Bulgaria.

It’s quietly written that when sharing becomes more of a surrounding encounter than an isolated lore, colors begin to equalize audio—truly and fantastically, even in the dark. But behold blind Medusa, tantrum worms beneath a’loam, and swarms of crickets: all different, yet monologues to sound recipients. Watch a movie without sound. Dream with your eyes open. Talk to a listener. Put your finger in the soil and smell where you are. Make a deal with the color blue.

There is a peculiar moment when the senses begin to trespass. The eye overhears, the ear looks back, the hand remembers what neither of them touched. Perhaps this is not a failure of listening, but its daydreamlike condition: we hear colours, see echoes, remember gestures as landscapes, and occasionally mistake silence for an answer. We do not simply receive what appears; we arrange it, misplace it, cover it, and sometimes discover it again.

To listen carefully may already be a kind of misunderstanding. We select, translate, remember, forget. We add weather to other people’s sentences and colour to their silences. We receive what is there, and quietly invent what is missing, until absence begins to acquire its own voice.

- Lars Nordby

Maria Blom (b. 1990, NO) is an artist based in Oslo. She graduated with an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art in 2017. Her practice has an autobiographical approach as it ties together personal experiences and stories - revisiting these memories and transforming them into new forms and habitats.

Her work has previously been presented at venues including Snails (NO), Glasgow Project Room (UK), Oplandia Kunstsenter (NO), The Glue Factory (UK) and Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Angers (FR).