Marian Davies
BIO
Marian Davies is a visual and plastic artist born in Equatorial Guinea and nationalized Spanish. She currently resides in Madrid, where she graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid (2017) and has subsequently completed several courses, including the Postgraduate course Cultura y Pensamiento de Pueblos Negros taught by Euro-Mediterranean University Institute, UCM (2018/2019) and, in 2020, a Cultural Management Course at Mombó Art Gallery Spain.
Her solo exhibitions include Tras la máscara: De lo tradicional a lo contemporáneo, Asociación Uyama, Madrid (2023); Entre dos mares, Espacio feminista Annette Cabelli, Madrid (2022); Retazos del Alma, Museo Africano Mundo Negro (Madrid, 2020); Identity, touring in various exhibition spaces in the Madrid región (2017-9); and Desde muy lejos traigo estas Almas, Episcopio de Ávila (2019). In recent years she has been invited to participate in various group exhibitions in the Madrid area.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
At present, in addition to my artistic work, I am involved in the creation of the Akiba Art African Gallery, to showcase the work of Afro-Spanish and African artists in Spain, where there is a lack of forums to show our work.
My own work is attempts to integrate painting and sculpture. It is art intended to be touched, felt on the skin, recreated with the gaze.
It combines cargo materials, colorful African fabrics, and other media to extol African women, the great pillars and engines of Africa, while offering a perspective on African cultures distinct from received Eurocentric narratives. I believe Africa still has much to tell, and that it can enrich the broader culture with its emphasis on diversity, loyalty, and respect for the other, and these are the central values of my work.
Works of art must transmit, move, provoke, and my work intends to show other realities that enrich through diversity.