Marius Ritiu

°1984, lives and works in Antwerp and New York.

Marius Ritiu is a sculptor, painter and storyteller whose practice questions the concepts of nationhood, borders and nationalism. Ritiu’s works often incorporate copper as the physical material that connects the world. The technological applications of the material in communication and transport have enabled the mobility of ideas, goods and people, impacting the nature and physicality of borders. Copper is important in the artist’s practice for its philosophical connotations as well, drawing on the chemical elements association with human history and the cosmos through alchemy. Ritiu’s own experience as a travelling artist and an immigrant, continuing crossing borders and witnessing variations in culture, religion, nation, race, anchors his practice, and reveals his work as a quest to comprehend and express the global through the local, the universal through the particular, the familiar through the alien.