immigration

The distance between doors

7/12

The 7th work of this series is about the difficulty to go from one place to the other, even after you already relocated. How the paths may seem easy, but nothing is really easy when you feel vulnerable and weakened. The doors are in the same room, but the simple way from one to the other can make you feel afraid and represent dangers that your mind knows way too well to ignore. Mental health play a key role in it. The decision to start a new life is filled with fears and insecurities. And it takes a lot of courage not only to dare to leave but to arrive and deliberately choose the best possible path for yourself. Bringing in the good memories and allowing new friends into your life may help to keep the ghosts of the past at a safe distance. It is not easy to decide and choose to be happy, leaving behind all the rubble, wounds and bruises, but it is necessary, despite the impossibilities. And it’s worth it, despite the herculean efforts. I am grateful to the friends who helped me build new memories, easing my fears and creating safer shelters, with wider and more beautiful windows and views.

Luciana Mariano (Series: Finding home)

Original artworks available at MakslaXO Galley, in Riga, Latvia.

The long corridors of bureaucracy

6/12

The 6th painting of this series is called “The corridors of bureaucracy”. This work is about the bureaucracy of things when you are already facing processes of change. Besides the material and emotional aspects of moving and adapting, immigration processes pile up a complicated barrier of rules, laws and papers, written in uncomprehensible and inaccessible words that require precision, knowledge, tranquility and patience, often not available in troublesome times. Demands energy and builds up the tension, amplifying the difficulties, doubts and unsecurities. The bureaucratic aspects of immigration are usually not the most difficult but is certainly one of the most stressful. It treats you as a standardised object to be in accordance with the demanded rules. It reduces humans to check lists of compliances. Bureaucratic environments are intimidating, sterile, not welcoming. Long corridors with unfamiliar faces, endless demands and unpredictable resolutions. You must walk it through if you want to overcome it. But at the end,  there are no certainties nor guarantees for actually making it. You can´t really avoid it, it is a test for resilience. Uncomfortable and unavoidable growing pains, found on every little corner of the long winding road we call life.

Utopia: a planet without borders, so people could follow their bliss and find their place in the world instead of struggling for acceptance.

Luciana Mariano

P.S.: All the works from this series can be seen and acquired at Gallery MākslaXO in Riga, Latvia.

Finding Balance

5/12

The 5th work of the immigration series is  called “Finding balance”. Major life changes provoque unbalance.  Immigrating requires a change of mind-set, search and understanding of the new reality. The new structure may seem confusing and the ways to function in society may need adjustments. Language, culture, clima, everything will challenge your adaptability. The door is half open and you never know what it may hold behind it. The scene is simple; door, table, different chairs where perhaps one can sit for a while and find some guidance or figure out the silence. On the walls 2 paintings: the waters look straight while the firm ground looks unbalanced. Small details and overwhelming feelings. All stages of a major change or immigration is a vast and uncomfortable ecossistem of feelings. Can you relate?

Under the waters of emotion

2/12

The second piece of this series is about emotions. It is a flood of feelings that seems like drowning, both in thoughts and in material things. What is lost, how will I survive this, what goes and what stays, are some of the questions that invade heart and occupy mind of someone that is about to move, change, relocate, flee, immigrate. The sensation of oddity, the heaviness and lightness of the things that you know so well but are not, or no longer are, a part of you; things and that you want, that you feel you can´t live without, but you can´t carry.
The water is the element that composes most of our human body, water is a part of us, brings us to life, we depend on it and it also can kill us. Under the waters of emotion is that overwhelming feeling of confusion, when what is you and what looks like a part of you are separating. It can be an opportunity of catching new breath but it can also mark a transition that feels like birth or like the death of somethings. If you are under water you need to escape in a hurry to survive, If water is slowly flooding your known space you need to evacuate and leave most things behind, if water is your playground you can plunge into it and then later enjoy the memories it granted you. There are uncountable possibilities of how and what the waters can mean for each story of immigration. Between the lines we all experience some common emotions and milestones on this ocean of possibilities. We are islands surrounded by sea. And each tempest writes a different story on this brief adventure of life.

Under the waters of emotion
60×90 cm – 2023 – Acrylics on canvas
Available for viewing and sales at MakslaXO Gallery, Riga, Latvia.

Luciana Mariano

…and they loved music.
…and they loved music.

1 / 12

First painting:

“ …and they loved music.”

60×90 – acrylics on linen – 2023

The rupture. It can be a war, a divorce, a deception or any reason to relocate. A new job, a new love, a new life. They loved music and they had a story prior the rupture but it no longer works, no longer serves its purpose; it is time leave the wreckage behind and embark on a journey of reconstruction. Heart and objects may be broken. It is never easy to leave what once was your safe ground but it is necessary to take chances towards a new beginning, towards any possibility of being whole again.

*This work and collection are available for acquisition at Maksla XO Gallery, in Riga, Latvia.

https://makslaxogalerija.lv

1This collection consists in 12 pieces, made during a 2 months residency at Serlachius Museum Residency in February-March 2023. All pieces are connected and they are a result of a research and deeper thought about what it means to leave, depart, immigrate, flee, relocate, move, change, restart. If you are leaving your known home and world behind, for any reason, you may experience some of this feelings. Maybe you are relocating for a new job or for love; perhaps you are moving because of a new opportunity, a loss of job, a divorce; or if your country is at war, if you need to escape for better life conditions, or any reason at all…some of this feelings meet everyone. Leaving, for any given reason, deploys a chain of feelings that are common for most situations. It is a kind of mourning, first the overwhelmed feeling of loss, then the various steps that makes you cope with the change, then acceptance and understanding, then adaptation and peace. Not necessarily all those feelings but surely some of them. And it is a very particular experience with common perceptions and feelings. I hope you can identify some of them, but specially I hope you can, after a harsh storm, find yourself again and feel that you found home.