Maria Koshenkova

Graduated from the St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, St. Petersburg, Russia – MA degree, 2004, and attended a glassblowing course run by Charlie Meaker, Bornholm Folk High School (Bornholms Højskole), Bornholm, Denmark, 2004. She participated in the students’ exchange at Kalmar University, Glass Design Programme, Sweden, 2004, and – as a postgraduate guest student – at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2005–2006. She worked as a visiting lecturer at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, UK, and in Denmark, as a teacher of masterclasses. Since 2009 she has been running the Koshmar company in Copenhagen.

She has received a number of awards and grants, including: the Jutta Cuny-Franz Foundation Talent Prize, Germany, 2013; Hempel’s Kulturfond, Hempel Glass Prize, Denmark, 2016.
She has also received multiple international art residencies, including: the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung residency grant, Berlin Glas e.V., Germany, 2013; a fellowship at the Creative Glass Center of America, Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center, Millville, NJ, USA, 2014; Artist in Residence at the S12 Open Access Studio and Gallery, Bergen, Norway, 2015; Artist in Residence, Glass Art Centre, Glassworks Frantisek in Sazava, the Czech Republic, 2016.

She has participated in 10 individual exhibitions in Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Russia and Sweden, including: Hempel Glass Museum, Nykøbing Sjælland, Denmark, 2016. Her individual show in the Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark, is scheduled for 2017.
She has also participated in more than 30 group exhibitions in Denmark, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the USA, including: the Coburg Prize for Contemporary Glass 2006, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg, Coburg, Germany; the International Exhibition of Glass Kanazawa, Kanazawa, Japan, 2010; Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, 2015.
She has created a number of site specific installations across Russian and European venues, such as: the Ludwig Museum at the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Her work is included in a number of international public collections, including: the Ludwig Museum, St. Petersburg; Notojima Glass Art Museum, Ishikawa, Japan; the Museum of American Glass, Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center, Millville.

Many of Koshenkova’s works and installations are combined with other materials such as wood, clay, plastic and steel wire. In her constant search for new forms of expression she throws herself into projects of location-specific land art works, drawings and assemblage.

In all of her works Maria is mostly interested in reaching the point where the readymade objects she uses as a model – whether they are wooden planks from a wall of a destroyed house or freshly bought pig hearts from a market – are transformed by the physical artistic act of re-sculpting them into border lines which at the same time represent and show the parallel realities she deals with: the lost past, the real – present context of now and ‘personal created reality’.