Maria Marinho (also known as Maria Marinho Edgell) is a London-based visual artist whose practice explores the intersections between art, science, cosmology and the human body. Working across painting, drawing, paper cut-outs and three-dimensional forms, her work moves between the microscopic and the cosmic, investigating ideas of scale, perception, evolution and impermanence.
Her early work consisted of abstract, nearly monochromatic paintings in which textural blocks and fields of colour suggested personal memory and a spiritual sensibility. Over time, an increasing fascination with science and the mystery of the cosmos became central to her practice.
In Black Dwarf, for example, references to the final stages of stellar evolution coexist with imagery suggestive of microscopic biological forms, creating an ambiguity of scale between the immense and the minute.
In the series Topography of the Body, human organs are reconstructed through intricately layered paper cut-outs, cut by hand with a surgical knife. Resembling topographic maps and sometimes incorporating light, these works consider the body as a landscape shaped by evolution, vulnerability and survival.
Maria studied painting at Camberwell College of Arts in London. She has lived and worked internationally, and her work has been exhibited in London, Hong Kong and Portugal. She currently lives and works in London.