MALAK ALZEYOUDI (ABU DHABI)
A young Russian artist living in Abu Dhabi is using pearls to create artworks inspired by Emirati heritage.
Maria Pertseva, a visual artist and photographer, moved to the UAE in 2023. Her art journey began with the study of folklore, which remains an important part of her art practice.
She is interested in how old narratives and archetypes manifest themselves in contemporary life and in people's individual experience.
Abu Dhabi's cultural landscape is expanding rapidly, blending its rich culture and heritage with modern creative trends. This transformation opens new doors for artists from diverse backgrounds, languages, and cultures to showcase their work in local galleries and exhibitions.
Abu Dhabi offers her the perfect ecosystem to expand her artistic career. The launch of new museums and art programmes provides Pertseva with the ideal platform to connect with local art community.
By exploring these diverse exhibitions, she observes curatorial practice closely and studies how artists engage with the public. The cultural landscape of Saadiyat has transformed her perspective.
"Interacting with people from different cultures also helps me see my own from a new perspective," she told Aletihad. "Every day, people with completely different backgrounds, languages and cultures come together here. At the same time, I often notice a genuine curiosity about each other's experiences."
For her, art that embodies "folklore and personal mythology provides a great deal of material for reflection".
Pertseva draws inspiration from natural environment of the UAE, capturing the essence of the sea, water, sunlight and reflections.
Reflecting on her new environment, she notes: "Moving into a space that initially felt like an "other world" of sun, sea and desert intensified the themes of memory, adaption and inner transformation in my work."
In the desert, she experienced a unique sense of solitude where the focus gradually shifted toward the self. "The desert heightens your sense of observation: you start paying attention to the light, the wind, subtle changes in colour, and the textures of the sand," she said.
Pertseva describes the colours she discovered in the UAE as muted, delicate, and slightly contemplative. "The palette of the Emirates is much closer to my inner self," she said of the soft tones in her artworks.
She added: "I use soft-focus lenses, blur, reflections and various distortions."
One of the artworks she shared on Instagram beautifully blends the sea and the desert into a single frame. This synthesis caught the attention of audiences on social media, with one comment describing it as a "combination of two different worlds."
Pertseva's inspiration begins with deep observation, which led her to explore the symbols, stories and cultural meaning behind her subjects. "In Abu Dhabi this is how pearls entered my practice," she recalled.
Her last project "What the Depth Holds", presented at Manarat Al Saadiyat, was inspired by the history of the UAE and the tradition of pearl diving. She uses pearls as a metaphor for lived experience, focusing on the concept of diving into the depths, and in the challenges humans experience behind the beaty of a pearl.
"I first heard stories of pearl divers here in the UAE, it was a revelation," Pertseva shared. "How dangerous and incredible what they did, just to retrieve a single pearl."
In her artistic vision, pearls symbolise the profound experiences an individual manages to bring up from the depths. While they preserve the memory of past hardships, over time, these memories transform and acquire an entirely new value.
Pertseva presented her pearl-related artworks in Moscow as part of the group exhibition, "Only Silence", at the Linda de la Gallery. She believes presenting this project in Russia was particularly meaningful because it was born largely out of her experience of living between two countries.
"I explored how my encounter with the UAE's history of pearl diving gradually became part of my own artistic language," she shared. "I think there is something beautiful about how, through art, we can rethink what we have experienced, give it form, and find light within it."