Maria Simmons

Maria Simmons cultivates an art practice nurtured by mystery. Simmons creates hybrid works that integrate organic materials, giving life to sculptures and installations by contamination, fermentation, and various methods of conservation. Fascinated by the cross-references between science and mythology, Simmons allows themself to be swayed by uncertainty and uses creativity to explore hypothetical reasons for the incongruities that surround them and to welcome the inexplicable.

As part of their research on fermentation, Simmons explores marshy ecosystems. The unique conditions of these humid environments formed by the accumulation of dead plants, such as acidic water and anaerobic conditions, slow decomposition and help to naturally preserve buried organic matter. Among the strange discoveries made as peat bogs around the world are mined – including human bodies almost mummified under moss – Simmons is particularly interested “bog butter” deposits. The origin of the tradition of burying containers of butter in peat moss hollows remains unexplained. Simmons probes this curious practice, hoping to re-create its gestures to perpetuate a timeless link with marshes and reconnect with the mystery that inhabits them.

In Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Simmons took advantage of the spring residency to suffuse themself in the surroundings – to watch sea grasses grow, snails trace lines in the sand, and the tides rise – and, in the studio, to shape ceramic containers designed to be filled with butter. They created bulbous forms with organic contours, inspired both by biology and by the mythology of the bogs, and sculpted spotted mushrooms and carnivorous plants with viscous glazes as well as will-o’-the-wisps in a luminous green evoking the eerie marsh lights that are interpreted in folklore as wandering spirits and that science attributes to gases spontaneously combusting. To remystify marshes, Simmons invoked the symbols that will ritualize the future burial of these containers, following the lineage of legends that animate these timeless places and that, Simmons hopes, will survive their being mined and climate change.