Western Taiwanese by Mariia Ominina
Mariia is a poster designer from Russia, she works as a digital artist, but mostly creates posters. Also, Mariia is a student of the world-famous poster artist Peter Bankov.
For the past few years, Mariia has traveled and worked extensively in Asia. She explored cultural differences, the reasons for the immigration of Western people who come to live in Asia, and the difficulties they face living in Asian countries.
Mariia's travels and explorations resulted in a three-month solo exhibition entitled "Western Taiwanese", which opened in Dounan City in November 2018. For this exhibition, the artist prepared a series of poster, and also for the first time worked in video art and installation formats.
In her posters, Mariia tried to visually reflect her impression of Yunlin County, where she lived at the time. She used a variety of visual research methods to capture cultural landscapes while creating the style of her posters. For example, she used Google Earth footage for the visuals, and Mariia also worked with local historians in the archives department. Mariia has created a vibrant palette of 6 colors along with a dynamic composition that together reflects the brilliance and quirkiness of Taiwanese nature.
Wang Chia Wei, curator of this exhibition, says Maria's exhibition was a completely new way to see Taiwanese culture. She also added that these posters are more like hokku, where the artist expresses deep meaning in simple words.
Mariia Ominina's project "Wester Taiwanese" is a fresh look at the world of poster art, where the artist expresses herself not through direct visual clues, but via vague images or meanings. Mariia managed to capture the connection between meanings and the visual component in the paradigm of postmodern aesthetics, where the classical "laws" and "norms" in design have ceased to be decisive. Her posters are lively and interesting, plunging into the confluence of new-old art, that borders between meaning and visuality; conceptualism and avant-garde.