R.A.W: Marina Zumi

13 November 2020 // R.A.W

R.A.W: Marina Zumi

During these uncertain times, I have heard many stories of resilient people: strong and passionate; they had found themselves to be redundant at their workplace, or in the position of changing the so-far old fashion and comfortable way to do their job.

I have always pictured them as “skilled surfers”, dealing with the crest of the way, scary yet beautiful.

This mental image has just been exploited by a similar one, where the person is not riding the board, but a cherry picker.

Marina Zumi is a talented street artist, with a background in fashion design. Argentinian native and Berlin based, she is known for her extra large, colourful murals covering entire buildings in cosmic-like illustrations.

Looking at her work, even before pandemic, she has been dealing with lighting in two important ways. First of all, natural light has always been part of her work equation: the colors’ selection for her walls, the position in relation with the sun path to turn her walls visible; given she worked mainly outdoors, there were many aspects of daylight that had to be taken in consideration. Secondly, her works are placed in moments of absence of light, just after the twilight, where the real magic happens.

‘Tri-nitid’ Studio Zumi - May 2019 Practices (in) studio
‘Tri-nitid’ Studio Zumi - May 2019 Practices (in) studio

This is noticeable even in her latter investigation, in fact starting 2019 and well established during the 2020 general indoor scenario, extensive lights studies at her studio in Berlin had encouraged the exploration in between contrasts and perceptions of light and shadows, towards the re-signification of common spaces and objects, becoming just the support of a surreal sneak peek, from a quantum parallel world.

‘Lucid dream’ Art-Scape fest Lujsdal, Sweden - Aug/2019
‘Lucid dream’ Art-Scape fest Lujsdal, Sweden - Aug/2019

Her installations result filled with light in different forms: light as colour; light as a geometry revealer; light as energy.


‘Techno Poetry’ Urban Spree Berlin Art Week - set/2019

What we notice of Marina’s work is that they have a marvellous composition that manages to distort the viewer's perception, just with a wise use of the neon wire, straight edges, symmetry and geometric patterns.


‘Swim Dream’ Upeart fest FINLAND - March 2020

During the last spring quarantine time she decided to be streaming from her studio re-creating, in partnership with the art and culture platform Juxtapoz, a light installation in 45 minutes. With her digging along her career, till arriving at new expressions, Marina shows us the importance of taking the best out of any situation and to use “the process” as a possibility to improve your work, as well as our vision.

Using light as a tool to shape spaces, objects and to reflect around the essence of both, Marina talks the same language of architectural lighting designers, only choosing temporary to fixed installation and constant development to a given artistic medium.

R.A.W Blogger
Martina Frattura

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