BIOGRAPHY
Maria Bessarabova is a London-based artist and architect, whose work fuses classical precision with surreal provocation. Her collection Bazaar of Delightful Atrocities transforms unsettling imagery—doll heads, veiled figures, anatomical hybrids—into meticulously rendered drawings of eerie beauty. With architectural discipline and emotional depth, she explores themes of control, decay, and transformation. Each piece balances elegance and discomfort, inviting viewers into spaces where myth, memory, and corporeality collide. Bessarabova’s art resists simplicity; it seduces and unsettles in equal measure, offering a haunting reflection on how beauty can both conceal and reveal what we fear, remember, or desire.
CV
exhibitions:
– Art House Online Gallery
Honorable mention artist of the Month
– Limner Gallery, SlowArt Productions, 123 Warren St.,
Hudson, NY
– Arte Natura, An exhibition devoted to Art inspired by
Nature, Curated by Tim Slowinski
– Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, 4 Brook Street
Birmingham
RBSA Drawing Prize 2025 Exhibition
awards:
– The Brian Henderson Prize
AA Foundation
The award looks to celebrate and acknowledge the abiding artistry
and vision assocciated with the hand-drawn architectural image
– The Henry Florence Studentship
The prize was established in 1916 in the name of the AA President
from 1878-1879
STATEMENT
I draw to unravel what lies beneath surface impressions—how beauty can mask discomfort, and how discomfort can reveal truth. My practice engages the body, organic forms, and classical symbolism as sites of contradiction, where fragility meets resilience, seduction meets decay. Influenced by architecture and anatomy, I render with precision but invite ambiguity. I’m not interested in shock, but in the quiet tension that arises when something familiar becomes strange. Each drawing is a question, not an answer—a visual excavation of what we choose to see, and what we choose to turn away from.
