Maria Theresa Barbist, an Austrian‑born artist and psychologist, grew up in alpine settings and later immigrated to the United States. She earned a doctorate in psychology, completed postdoctoral training in psychotherapy, and worked at Innsbruck Hospital focusing on trauma therapy for immigrant Turkish women. A 2010 movement‑based art therapy workshop in San Francisco influenced the direction of her artistic practice, which now combines performance and painting across varied locations.
Her series DER GRUND AUF DEM ICH STEHE follows five stages of trauma healing—identify, confront, release, change and growth. The works use tarp as a flexible, non‑absorbent painting surface, overlaid with abstract oil‑stick color fields, Polaroid‑like skins and language referencing the German words Grund and Abgrund. Barbist transports the pieces to sites of personal significance, including her Miami backyard, the overgrown garden of her childhood home in Austria, the alpine summit Hafelekar at 7,657 feet, and urban settings such as San Francisco and the Miami shoreline, where she reenacts the gestures that created each painting.
Related projects document her relocation within the United States. VON DER SCHATZKAMMER INS PARADIES reflects a shift from guarded interiority to an opening described as a portal, featuring a vertical spine that recalls early world maps and was first performed at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco before a video was produced at the Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami. VON DEN BLAUEN BERGEN KOMME ICH draws on a nursery tune her father played, juxtaposing a sense of home with origins elsewhere, and incorporates painted lines that echo the ridgelines of the mountains of her Austrian background.
Press release issued by Orlando Museum of Art:
https://omart.org/news/grounding-gestures-cardinal-healing/
🤖 AI-assisted content notice: This item was written with AI assistance from the source document linked above. The underlying facts come from that public source, not from our own reporting. No quotes, interviews or original reporting are implied. Spotted something wrong? Email corrections@theorlandoconnect.com.
