Only Flowers Were the Treasure — Maria Luneva in Conversation
Maria
Luneva
Moscow · b. 2000 · Nature · Flowers · Futuristic Photography
A 23-year-old artist from Moscow whose work merges flowers with the body, the futuristic with the found. A petal becomes a tongue. A bell becomes a ring. A sprout fits behind the ear like it always belonged there.
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
"My great inspirer and engine of my creativity is nature. I did not choose her as a creative tool — she herself is the primary source and basis of all my works. I only notice her uniqueness and give her new meanings in order to ultimately emphasise her self."
"I would call myself a follower of Katya Molchanova @thundergirl_xtal."
"At the age between 7 and 12, everything could be made into an adventure. Frequent cycling trips with my mother was one of those. We always took shovels with us to dig interesting plants on the way and then plant them in our flower bed."
"I loved to ride along unfamiliar paths and felt like a treasure hunter where only flowers were the treasure. Recently, I realised that this left a strong imprint — I was riding a bike and noticed that my eyes were scurrying on both sides of the road in search of interesting plants, just like in childhood."
Tell us about your creative process.
"I find an interesting flower, leaf, mushroom — and start playing with it in association, looking for a new place for it where it will become something new. Most often, this place is on my body, on my face."
"The petal becomes an extension of the tongue or a growth on the ear. And when this petal becomes something else, it seems to me that it makes it possible to see and be surprised at its originality in isolation from meanings and clichés."
"Most of all, I love when the plant has a 'comfortable' shape — it fits my body like a puzzle and does not need to be glued. For example, bells that are simply put on the fingers, sprouts that can be put on the ear."
"I was riding a bike and noticed that my eyes were scurrying on both sides of the road in search of interesting plants — just like in childhood. The emotion of treasure hunters and adventure remained."
How did the pandemic affect your creativity?
"My creativity was born during a pandemic, when I started to study at the university remotely — a lot of time and energy were freed up. I don't know much and I often stay at home, so little had changed for me. A lot of things began to change for me personally — I started self-realisation already at the time of the pandemic."
What does wellbeing mean for you?
"Well-being for me, in a global sense, is doing what I love in the present and anticipating the future. In every day wellbeing — I can create all day forgetting about food, but I can eat all day and do nothing!"
"I am trying to understand what else can fascinate me as an artist. The desire to grow pushes me to expand my creativity."
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From the Antakly Projects archiveFloral artist whose work, like Maria's, finds poetry in the relationship between flowers and the human form.
Read on Antakly Projects ↗ Art · Scent · NatureA conversation about nature, memory and the senses — in the same register as Maria's childhood cycling treasure hunts.
Read on Antakly Projects ↗ Art · NatureArtist whose inspiration, like Maria's, begins and ends with the natural world — and the unique meanings she finds within it.
Read on Antakly Projects ↗Antakly Projects — originally Ninu Nina — has been in conversation with artists, photographers, designers and creatives from across the world since 2003. Maria Luneva's practice — playful, botanical, quietly extraordinary — is exactly the kind of emerging voice this platform was built to share.
And for the personal rants, opinions you didn't ask for, and the occasional existential spiral: follow me on Substack.
Only flowers were the treasure. ✦
