Maria Trillidou: Terra Incognita

Terra Incognita (collection of Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture)
150cm x 110cm watercolor, graphite, crayons, collage on paper

Between enigma and enlightment, the artworks transport us to a realm of unknown terrains. Enchanting habitats and mysterious creatures are arranged on paper using a mixed technique in an almost cartographical manner were ‘Terra Incognita’, the land of the unknown, is a metaphor for our extended Self which the more we attempt to identify by rational measures the more elusive it seems to become.
The unexplored parts of the Self defy definitions by resembling the ‘uncharted waters’
of unmapped territories often believed to be inhabited by dragons, monsters, strangers or aliens, therefore dangerous and unattainable according to our limited awareness of who we are.
Mythologicaly charged, the artwork offers a vision transcending those fragmentations and merges the horizons between the known and unknown terrains by suggesting open canals from one dimension to another, unifying those fields.
The Zen aesthetics give the work a meditative feeling of blending, a sacredness of the place and a profound longing to inhabit a divine world.
Some of the terrains depicted give the feeling of being holy sites, places of worship, of temples and sanctuaries used for initiatory rites and sometimes they look like ‘middle ground’ links between earth and heaven.

Macrocosmic yet microcosmic at the same time, the work creates its own complex universe going from the artist’s personal vision to Omni-vision and declares it to be a holy one.
Terra Incognita is for me the passage to the extended dimension of our being for those who would dare the passing through gates, climb the stairways, enter the dragon castles, navigate the dangerous waters into the realm where time and space are neither homogenous nor continuous, the blending frontier between chaos and cosmos.