Latvian artist Maira Rībena develops a materially driven practice that explores stillness, perception and the relationship between natural processes and contemporary visual experience. Working with tactile surfaces, reclaimed textiles, organic matter and increasingly natural earth pigments, she creates compositions in which texture, repetition and subtle variation become the primary elements of expression.

At the centre of Rībena's practice is an interest in slowing down the act of looking. In contrast to the acceleration and visual saturation of contemporary life, her works propose a different relationship with time and attention. Rather than demanding an immediate response, they invite viewers to discover the quiet complexity of surfaces, the irregularities of natural materials and the delicate rhythms that emerge through accumulation and repetition.

Her artistic language is informed by a close observation of nature, particularly its capacity to generate complex structures through simple, recurring processes. These references are not translated into literal representations of landscapes or organic forms, but into abstract compositions that evoke natural systems through their physical presence and internal organisation.

Having entered the visual arts from a professional background in finance, Rībena has developed her practice through independent research, experimentation and an increasingly conscious engagement with the origins and properties of materials. Her growing use of natural pigments and reclaimed elements reflects an approach in which material responsibility becomes inseparable from artistic expression.

Her works occupy a space between abstraction, material investigation and contemplative experience. Through restraint rather than excess, Rībena creates what she describes as a form of "visual oxygen": environments of stillness in which the viewer is encouraged to pause, observe and reconnect with the subtle relationships between matter, perception and time.

Curatorial Text -

Ainhoa Fernández, Founder and Director of AF Art Advisory.