Mariana Sissia (born 1980 in Ramallo, Argetina, lives and works in Buenos Aires)'s practice explores drawing as a zone of encounter between physical action and psychic experience—approaching the technique not as a means of representation, but as a graphic gesture capable of enabling specific states of consciousness, akin to meditation.
Her work is grounded in the gestural tradition of 20th-century art, drawing from Eastern artistic sources. The calligraphic tension, sustained exercises with patterns, and the disciplining of instinct in her drawings resonate with the forms of traditional Chinese drawing. Her visual pieces, charged with mental energy, resist translation into language and suggest delicate, self-contained worlds into which viewers are invited to immerse themselves. This has led her to experiment with unconventional formats, incorporating scrolls as exhibition devices and rice paper as her chosen surface. These formats, widely used in Buddhist cultures, require the viewer to engage in intimate proximity with the work—calling for a fragmented and detailed observation, and a gaze capable of following the forms as they expand, contract, or disappear.
