Maria Mariano was born in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil in 1971. In 2006 she moved to Venice for study. In 2009 concluded the Specialization in Visual and Multimedia Communications at the IUAV at Venice. In 2012 she obtained a PhD in Design Science at the IUAV. In Brazil Maria worked as a graphic designer and as an university professor (for 5 years) of the design course at the UNIJUI/Rio Grande del Sud university.
After the Bookbinding and Restoration of Ancient Books course at the Giovanni Olivotto School in Vicenza, 2010, she began working with artisanal bookbinding at Venice. Maria has illustrated children's books for Italian and foreign publishers, she has won awards both in Italy and abroad, participating in illustration exhibitions. In 2023 she participated, like Accademia di Belle Arti student, with his artwork in the charity auction organized by Christie's.
Graduated in February 2024 in the Master's Degree in Painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia with the thesis "Symbiosis: art and environmental awareness". Her theoretical/practical research project is the result of several reflections on nature and the connections between the different organisms that make this world so special and unique, which risk disappearing in the coming years before our eyes. She chose this research topic because she grew up in a city near the Atlantic Ocean. Once, when she was a child, during a walk along the seafront, she encountered a beached whale, unfortunately it was dead and its head was missing. The whale probably has been killed by a whaler. In these long stretches of sand that characterize the sout coast of Brazil, every time she climbed onto the highest dune to look at the horizon line between the sky and the ocean, She had the feeling of being like a grain of sand, she felt a sense of belonging to a much, much more complex system with infinite connections. From this close relationship with the environment comes her passion for nature and the origins of her pictorial research.
Maria is currently working on her own painting projects that concern endangered nature and also creates artist's books on the same theme.
