Cristina Marian
The Winds are Changing
I flow in-between communities — local, global, intra-personal.
Bozeman, 2022
Cristina Marian's The Winds are Changing is her first solo exhibition since graduating with her MFA at the beginning of the pandemic in the spring of 2020.
The people we are now, two years later, are far from the people we were then. There are so many things to consider for the future of our species and our planet, but most of us are overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of issues and certainly, the unwieldy, exponential growth of tech that informs it all. An effect from these tumultuous years is a personal retreat into one's community. A feeling that the most attributable change that can be made is in your backyard, with who you are and what you bring to the table.
In this new work, Marian leans into the rapid changes experienced by her community that weave through intimate personal experiences of the past two years. There are the skeletons of new buildings fading into turbulent mark making and textures that inhabit the negative space — though never receding, always fighting to come to the foreground and be heard. There are fragments of Marian's intimate histories, hazily coming to the surface but always with a tether to an architectural framework outside of self.
Since moving to Bozeman in 2014, I have gradually developed a sense of place, belonging, and purpose.This series showcases her fluidity of belonging. Marian has always been interested in community engagement. During the past two years, she taught art at Headwaters Academy, created a public mural installation in Bozeman and Missoula, constructed "Tudor" — a fantastical friend for Random Acts of Silliness — and made a beautiful site-specific performance piece that brought the community together for affordable housing initiatives.
Installation views
Painter, muralist, community builder.
Cristina Marian is a Romanian-born, Montana-based artist whose mixed-media paintings explore liminality, immigration, community, and the perpetual reshaping of place. She earned her MFA from Montana State University in 2020, completing her degree at the onset of the pandemic.
Beyond the studio, Marian's practice extends into public art and community engagement — including mural installations in Bozeman and Missoula, teaching at Headwaters Academy, and site-specific performance work addressing affordable housing. Her work negotiates the tension between belonging and displacement, mapping intimate personal histories onto the architectural frameworks of the neighborhoods she moves through.