Art Conversation with Ruby - artist Mariah (OxVestica)
- rubyrhizome
- Feb 10
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 24
Controversy and Social Power Structures
R: How did you start making art?
M: I grew up during the war time and I was raised in the post-war political narrative. During the aggression, I spent my childhood with a family in the countryside, out of shelter, but we were isolated and there were no other children. I remember, out of loneliness, I started drawing and painting intensely, creating my own world. There were imaginary characters that I kept drawing, assigning them personalities and stories.
Another thing I kept drawing and making all the time were planes. I was also making them out of paper scribbling all sorts of characters as passengers inside. I knew that planes represented some kind of social threat. So, I was launching paper planes from trees trying to hit the actual plane.
R: I also noticed a lot of policemen in your visual work. Does that also come from your early experiences?
M: Yes. They are in some sense a symbol of authority and repression. I remember the influence of the media due to the political situation in my country, a lot of demonstrations and the picture of police brutality against demonstrants. I think that’s why, through my work, I find recurring themes—certain things that, as a child, acquired a larger archetypal meaning for me. I explore these dynamics through that imagery.
R: While observing your conceptual and performative works—such as Memories Pissed Out, 500m in the Depth of Sleep, Transparent Dreams—I felt both curiosity and discomfort. You challenge very provocative and controversial themes, and I found a similar feeling when studying the works of conceptual and politically engaged artists like Santiago Sierra.
M: Yes, I can see my work aligning with postmodernism theories, performative, and politically engaged art. Artists such as Santiago Sierra, Chris Burden, Francis Alÿs, and even Banksy are very much in line with my research.
There’s one particular work by Banksy that recently started to appear on socials, Sirens of the Lambs, which perfectly represents what interests me, depicting cruelty and the contradictions of human behavior through an almost innocent and childlike lens and aesthetic.
R:This dual nature of life is really interesting. In fact, in your visual language, there are a lot of heavy, harsh, and extravagant themes presented through childlike symbols and archetypes—stuffed animals, puppies, Santa Clauses—alongside violence, excess, and destruction. What draws you to exploring this contrast?
M: I find human nature contradictory and complex. I don’t particularly use the word beautiful in art. I take a critical, sometimes pessimistic, attitude. Showing something to the public that feels innocent and childlike, but placing within it something unexpected, creates a contrast that mimics the unsettling feeling real life often gives us.
Your work is not easy to digest, but that’s what makes it so real and unique. Socio-political themes, excess, violence, even references to specific political figures or symbols—do you ever worry about public reaction and criticism?
I know my art isn’t meant to be comfortable, and it will receive strong criticism. So if it does, that means the work has succeeded in its message.
There is a term I came up with to better explain topics intersections in my art, “intimate psycho-political discourse”, because it blends psychology, politics, and behavioral studies through a very personal lens.
R: That’s fascinating, and I can see how that term applies across different areas of your work, even in the more innovative pieces. For example, in Vulwarms, you used data collected from women using a self-pleasuring device, integrating research measuring different experiences of pleasure. How did you use your approach to deepen and question this theme?
M: What interested me was the contrast between something as intimate and abstract as sexual pleasure and the act of translating it into raw metrics and numeric data. It’s almost humorous in a way. I found it dehumanizing yet ironic at the same time.
In Vulwarms, I represented women’s pleasure through abstract moving entities, computationally generated and evolving based on Fxhash random sequences. Vulwarms exist in a space-time grid of data, detached from the physical, yet still bound to their origin.
R: This is so intriguing. I’m really curious to see how your future projects unfold. Do you have anything you’d like to share about what’s coming next?
M: I have the tendency to be less bound by a single language or style, and more driven by ideas. I want to follow concepts first, then adapt medium to match them. My goal is to ask questions as unfiltered and freely as possible, which often requires a more performative and interdisciplinary approach.
R: Thank you for your time, Mariah. We’re looking forward to seeing what you create next! Where can we follow your work and projects?
M: You can follow my work at:
Website vestica.art Instagram instagram.com/vestica_magica Twitter https://x.com/0xVestica
About Mariah (OxVestica) Mariah is a Serbian-born artist with a Master of Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade and a Master of Science from Politecnico di Milano in Italy. Currently pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, her work has been exhibited in over 40 local and international shows, including prominent venues such as the largest billboard in Times Square, Art in Space gallery in Dubai, and MadArts Space in Florida. Her pieces are held in private collections across the USA and Europe. In addition to her artistic practice, she has a professional background in design and programming, integrating these disciplines into her broader creative exploration.
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