Primordial Future: Maria Boström's visionary journey between memory and future

There is an invisible thread that connects humanity's most distant origins to what is yet to come. It is along this fine line that we encounter the art of Maria Boström, a Finnish artist who, with her first solo exhibition in Rome, Primordial Future, invites us to reflect on tradition, spirituality and the future through a pictorial language dense with light and vibrations.

Maria Boström's artistic journey has its roots in an innate curiosity: "I think it's always been in my DNA,’ she says, recalling her early years spent in her uncle Bo Aurens' studio and the influence of a creative family. Her research stems from a deep desire to explore the meaning of life, to let her memory and subconscious discover and absorb new cultures, people and places because, as she herself says, ‘all this naturally resurfaces in my artistic expression".

The idea for Primordial Future arose from the intertwining of two experiences: watching Sergei Parajanov's film The Colour of Pomegranates and his first visit to Rome. On one hand, the poetic images and intense tones of the film – the deep red of the pomegranate, the pistachio greens, the earthy shades – created a vibrant and sensual palette in the artist's imagination. On the other, her encounter with the Eternal City sparked an intimate reflection: walking among ancient ruins and contemporary life ignited in her an awareness of time as stratification, where the present coexists with the past: “I felt like Rome somehow put his big big wings on around me and just held me” Maria said during the interview.

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Maria's creative process is instinctive, almost ritualistic. In the quiet of her studio in Sweden, surrounded by techno music and large canvases, the artist lets herself be carried away by the energy of the moment. She does not dominate the artwork, but rather the artwork guides her: “I often feel that it is not me who is painting, but the canvas that speaks to me, that asks to exist. I am just a conduit.”

Primordial Future unfolds as an interweaving of languages and materials, where painting, design and memory engage in dialogue. The canvases inhabit the space alongside the carpets, which transform the painting by opening up the surface of the canvas to a tactile and inhabitable dimension. Alongside them, the plexiglass pieces of the Actam Rem Ago project reimagine fragments of the original paintings, transforming them into translucent compositions that multiply the pictorial material and project it into space. Each work thus becomes a possible variation on the original, a form that is renewed and expands beyond the canvas: “the origin is what holds everything together: from the ancient to the modern, from the visible to the invisible. And that origin, in the end, is love. Love for oneself and for others, love as universal energy”.

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The experience that the artist wishes to convey to visitors is intimate and transformative: finding “the crack” within the painting, that opening that allows them to reconnect with themselves: 'My desire is that the viewer, visitor or buyer finds that crack in the painting and, once found, can become intimate with the work, discovering something that arouses all kinds of emotions in them: from anger to joy, from trauma to desire or excitement. This is my greatest desire: love and acceptance of oneself, of one's total self. Art should bring out everything we feel inside. There are no negative emotions: emotions are emotions and they are simply real and pure."

The language of colours is also an integral part of this message. Ochre and pistachio green become archetypal symbols: masculine and feminine, earth and cosmos, strength and harmony. Two poles that complement each other and dialogue, creating a visual rhythm that guides the gaze and emotions of the observer, inviting them to perceive the balance and energy that animate the artwork.

With Primordial Future, Maria Boström invites us to immerse ourselves in a suspended time, where past and future meet in the primordial energy of art. A journey that does not provide definitive answers, but opens up spaces for contemplation, allowing the painting – and not the artist – to guide the observer.

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