Maria Loboda sees reality and the material world as a universe of signs and meanings. She is interested in the symbolic connotations of physical objects in relation to time and history. Loboda investigates the connections between material things and the spiritual realm, between rationality and mysticism. Her works employ means of expression typical of various fields of art such as sculpture, installation or drawing – they can’t be easily categorised.
In the years 2003–2008 she studied fine art at the Städelschule art academy in Frankfurt am Main under professor Mark Leckey. From 2007 until 2008 she was a visiting artist and scholar of the New York University and Steinhardt School of Culture. Loboda received scholarships from the Dresden Cultural Foundation of Dresdner Bank (2008) and from the Hessische Kulturstiftung (2010). She lives and works in Berlin and London.
In one of her early works entitled A Guide to Insults and Misanthropy Loboda used flowers to explore the ability of words to take on a material form. The piece from 2004 consisted of an unusual arrangement of plants in a vase. The eccentric combination of large and small blooms, which had contrasting, dissonant colours, referred to the symbolic Victorian language of flowers. The elements of the bouquet conveyed rather negative notions such as hatred, distrust or grief. Loboda later created several other versions of this work. Each of them was different depending on the choice of plants and vases and on the way the artist arranged the flowers.
This piece was symptomatic of Loboda’s general approach to art, which was to manifest itself also in her later works. In 2007 she created the floor piece entitled What Will Happen?. It consisted of a dark parquet, in which several bright, geometrically shaped elements were placed. On top of it stood a peculiar-looking goblet accompanied by a spoon. The signs in the floor were based on symbols from the I-Ching – an ancient Chinese book of divination. In the oriental tradition it was essential to first ask an honest and respectful question in order to access the tome’s magical powers. Loboda’s work provoked the viewers to inquire about the meaning and purpose of the piece, therefore directing them towards the world of augury.
In 2010 the artist created a piece entitled Tasks Abandoned Before Completion. It consisted of a monolithic desk covered with black leather. On the surface of the object a trace of a removed item was visible. In this work a piece of furniture, which is usually associated with work and concentration, is stripped of its obvious functions and is transformed into a symbol of unaccomplished tasks.
In an interview from 2011 Maria Loboda talked about her creative method:
Unsurprisingly, the main activity I undertake in making art is thinking. I am not a particularly skilled craftsman and I rarely take much pleasure out of doing things (…). I am inspired by the art-making tradition, the knowledge behind craft, the systems, materials, ingredients one needs to create something. I am sort of fearful about becoming professional in any craft. I prefer to be a visitor, who doesn’t speak the language particularly well, but understands enough to knowingly misapprehend.
In 2012, Loboda was selected to present her work at Documenta 13. Her piece, This work is dedicated to an emperor (2012), was an installation of 20 cypresses that compose a sort of moving forest that travels over the law of the park, shifting its composition and moving gradually from one side of the Orangerie to the other.
At the end of 2014, Loboda created Day for Night during her stay in the high mountain shelter in the Valley of the Five Ponds. The stained glass window piece transforms landscape seen through it using geometric structures. Later, Loboda made a follow-up film, Night Conquers Day. It is a mysterious combination of images of the symmetrically regulated urban greenery and sophisticated architecture with wildness of nature and asperity of the mountains.
In January 2017, Loboda’s individual exhibition opened at CAC Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania. The show, I am Radiant, I am Radiant, I am Radiant in My Defeat, conceived especially for the CAC hall, further pursues her ongoing artistic explorations into the archaic concepts of diverse belief systems, the transcendental ideas of the human soul and the wholeness of their manifestations in arcane objects, archaeology, architecture, religion and art.