Photographic Alphabet: M is for Marylaura Mau
"Industry" by MaryLaura Mau, found image collage on paper 2013
By Emily Davis
Marylaura Mau spends ample time searching, cutting and collecting images from printed treasures she finds like magazines, pamphlets, and books, in order to compose her collages. She describes her process as “ordered chaos” as she does not paste the collages together, she simply places the small cutouts strategically, photographs it and then disassembles the work.
Storing the pieces in folders for safe keeping, allows her to maintain a history with characters and themes that reoccur in her works, whether a similar color temperature, or subject, each collage is somehow connected to the ones that came before.
Her work dabbles in the world of surrealism. Many of the photos play with the contrast between the human form, in many cases, female, against lesser natural locations, like a city skyline or floating horizontally in a domestic foyer. For example, a pair of female arms and legs are posed in a warm pink toned cafeteria, yet the aura of the photo breeds something more cold, artificial and detached. Specifically within her series called “girls”, this contrast considers the representation and the contextualization of women, their bodies, and their overt sexualization.
With a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kansas City Art Institute and later graduating from Pratt Institute with an Master of Professional Studies, Marylaura Mau has been creating art for years and honing in on her ability to create surreal conceptual collages that combine theory, humor, and abstraction with a thorough understanding of shape and color.
"Cafeteria" by MaryLaura Mau, found image collage on paper 2013
"Falling" by MaryLaura Mau, found image collage on paper 2012
"Lounge" by MaryLaura Mau, found image collage on paper 2013
"Lava" by MaryLaura Mau, found image collage on paper 2013
"Pull" by MaryLaura Mau, found image collage on paper 2011
"Worker" by MaryLaura Mau, found image collage on paper 2011
See more of MaryLaura Mau's work at here.
