Archive of work by graduates from the renowned MFA Programme at GSA

Marija Nemcenko

Marija Nemcenko (born 1989) is a Lithuanian artist currently living and working in Scotland. She graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in London, UK with a degree in Sculpture.

Drawing from her personal experience of growing up in a post Soviet Block country and subsequent cultural displacement having moved to the UK, Marija Nemcenko questions the binary constructs of East and West. This personal displacement that is often the best and the worst friend of an immigrant is directing her gaze towards questioning her own “otherness” both in relation to the home-land as well as her destination of choice. Marija Nemcenko uses the framework of Orientalism to discuss the formation of fragmented, abstracted and frequently racist understanding of (Middle) Eastern (European) migrants and their identity.

Cultural theorist Homi Bhabha once noted that “The truest eye may now belong to the migrant’s double vision” – precisely this double vision allows or rather places her at once inside and outside of the creation of fixed presumed ideas about the “other”. Through this double vision her work enters the territory of neither fiction nor fact. Mismatched artefacts – objects, materials and words come into play to reflect upon the cultural hybridity in the contemporary (Occicental) world. This brings to question how, why and where present-day mythologies were made to function as ‘truths’ within the context of modern every day.