Artist and Jeweller, Amsterdam Noord

Jewellery, printmaking, rust prints on paper and fabric, mycelium, plant roots, leaves. These aren’t random experiments. Instead, they are different angles on the same inquiry: what does matter leave behind? What traces do living things make?

What draws me in

I am consistently drawn to materials that carry their own intelligence. For instance, the rust that blooms on its own. Similarly, the mycelium that builds its own structure, the root that grows and carries the memory of form and the leaf that becomes textile. These are materials that are alive, that decay, that transform — and through that transformation, the intelligence of the natural world expresses itself.

How I work

I don’t control these processes entirely. Rather, I collaborate with them. I create conditions and then witness what emerges. Because of this, the work always surprises me.

The rust prints are about what time leaves behind. The mycelium pieces explore invisible networks and the intelligence of living systems. Meanwhile, the plant roots point to what grows in darkness, below the surface, unseen. At every turn, the material is never the point — the investigation is.

I’m Mariana, an artist and maker based in Amsterdam Noord.