Maria Arendt is a Russian artist, whose main media is embroidery or “drawing with thread on fabric”. The artist weaves fragments of rich history of her family (for instance, her grandmother was famous animalist sculptor Ariadna Arendt), real and fictional events into the canvas, securing them in the realm of materiality. Turning to her family crafts, Maria reactualises the past playing out alternative scenarios.

Current themes of Arendt’s work are classic “symbols” of 20th century Russian avant-garde architecture which she interprets in embroidery - a medium that would appear at odds with architecture.
Embroidered graphics on canvas, a technique artfully used by Arendt, frees architecture from its regular qualities rendering it subtle and weightless.

As curator Ekatherina Inozemsteva talks over her works: “Perhaps it’s an expression of utopian thinking on her part too; her fabrics could be likened to the netting which in Russia always envelops buildings under construction. Like a temporary drape, her embroideries give a glimmer of hope that beneath them lies a reality akin to the one which Tatlin, Melnikov and the Vesnins had envisaged.”

Maria Arendt was born in 1968 in Moscow, where she lives and works. In 1989 she graduated from the Kalinin Art and Industry College in Moscow with a major in embroidery.

Selected solo shows include Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Moscow, 2020), Schusev State Museum of Architecture (Moscow, 2014), Pushkin house (London, 2011).

Selected group shows include Gogol’s House new wing (Moscow, 2018), Iragui gallery (Moscow, 2018), The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, 2014).

Works of Maria Arendt are in collections of State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), The State Russian Museum, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Schusev State Museum of Architecture; private collections of Alberto Sandretti (Venice), Nicholas Ilyin (Frankfurt am Main), Brian Eno (London), Pierre-Christian Brochet (Moscow).