Porte Folio

ARTIST: MARIA CICCIA SMIDL
April 2026

I am a visual artist with a background in scenography and performance. My work revolves around the sensory and the yet to be found.  I work intuitively and process oriented. I explore how materials, across surfaces, installations and performative contexts, can open up spaces and movement. I listen with the eye, search for atmospheres and compose the image like a nocturne or a cacophony.

My charcoal works emerge through the gestures of charcoal and brush: strokes, rubbing and erasure. The surface becomes a field of traces, displacements and echoes. Charcoal appears as substance and deposit, insisting on its presenc, a materiality in which the intimate and the distant are connected.

I work with a sparse visual grammar that allows figures to emerge, either as isolated sculptures or as intimate deposits that embrace the entire surface.

The contrast between charcoal and surface forms the starting point for explorations of form and dissolution. A freedom seeking sensory inquiry, in which depth, openings and perceptions of body, time and space may emerge as intimate shifts. I use material as both process and concept from the choice of canvas, prepared from the ground up, to paper, often sourced from deadstock, and charcoal gathered from widely different places, from ancient charcoal kilns in Sicily to remnants of a burned bonfire in Sydhavnen.

The materials and the processes through which they come into being carry their own narratives. Together with literary, cosmic and intimate experiences and atmospheres, they form a complex point of departure for the creation of meaning.

Improper phenomena, detail 2022.

Improper Phenomena, Solo Exhibition, Byens Kro, Copenhagen, 2022

The title Improper Phenomena stems from Hannah Arendt’s reading of the biologist Adolf Portmann’s distinction between proper and improper phenomena in The Life of the Mind. For Portmann, proper refers to what comes forth and can be seen, while improper points towards what is hidden, what lies beneath the surface and does not immediately reveal itself to observation. Arendt explores this distinction in her reflections on the human mind as phenomenon.

I have used the notion of improper as a point of departure for the charcoal works. They emerge from something that does not yet have a clear form a sensation, an atmosphere or an inner movement that, through the process of working, gradually finds its way to the surface. The charcoal line becomes a way of giving form to the invisible.

The darkness and material presence of charcoal simultaneously evoke the underground and the subconscious. As the charcoal moves across the surface, a field emerges between what reveals itself and what withdraws. Something comes forth; something remains concealed.

Within this movement lies a displacement of what is improper, that which does not fit, cannot be controlled, or has not yet found a language. The work becomes a way of approaching these states. Through the marks, traces and disappearances of charcoal, the inner is made visible.

Improper Phenomena thus becomes a prism through which to view the works and their movement between darkness and light, inner and outer, the visible and that which still resides beneath the surface.

 

“Negativ Sol”  Solo Exhibition Baghold, Copenhagen 2025

Your Sun, My Sun Shines

and burns through
your open eye
in a dancing spiral

Your sun, my sun moves
and fertilizes
your empty gut
in ten thousand rays

Your sun, my sun illuminates
an infinite darkness
that feeds upon
the frost-clear drops of your breath.

Your sun, my sun turns the landscape
and swallows
you whole
in a ravenous kiss

Negativ Sol l-Vl Charcoal on Manifold 29 x 42 Cm

Netotsjka & Kassandra 2023/25

Netotsjka. Charcoal on Canvas 120x180x2 cm

Kassandra. Charcoal on Canvas 120x180x2 cm

Lydhør 2025

Lydhør l-lV Charcoal on Manifold 29 x 42 Cm

Kassandras Sol, Performance, Baghold, Copenhagen 2025

Samples from the performance “Kassandra’s Sol” September 2026 View more

CV

Maria Ciccia Smidl is a visual artist with a cross-aesthetic background in scenography and performance. Her visual art practice takes charcoal as both material and concept as its point of departure.

Her works emerge through inner sensations and transcendent processes, driven by what appears foreign, hidden, forgotten or repressed. Her practice explores how subtle shifts across the surface can evoke depth and intensity.

Rooted in a practice that also encompasses sound and voice, she works with a particular attentiveness to resonance, rhythm and space. In recent years, her visual practice has moved towards a more minimalist expression, in which contrast, density and emptiness are central.

She has presented solo exhibitions in Copenhagen, including Negativ Sol (Baghold, 2025) and Improper Phenomena (Byens Kro, 2022). Alongside her visual art practice, she has extensive experience as a scenographer in Denmark and internationally, which informs her approach to space, composition and materiality.

Her practice is characterised by an ongoing investigation into the potential of materials to create open, sensory pictorial spaces, where meaning remains in motion.

EDUCATION

1995 – Royal Danish Academy, School of Design, Spatial Design (Scenography)
2011 – Cand.it. in Digital Design and Communication, IT University of Copenhagen

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS / VISUAL ART & PERFORMANCE

2025 – Negativ Sol, solo exhibition, Baghold, Copenhagen
2024 – Luksus I, performance, Forsøgsstationen, Copenhagen
2023 – Solo exhibition, Zahles Gymnasium Art Association, Copenhagen
2022 – Improper Phenomena, solo exhibition, Byens Kro, Copenhagen
2021 – Feber, performance
2020 – Sam-tale i 8. Hus, Voices of Pythia
Anthology of a Frogkisser (performance series, selected works)
2018 – X, Baghold
2016 – IX, 100 Års Uro
2015 – VIII, Baghold
2014 – VI – I Believe I Can Fly, Albrechtsens Galleri, Copenhagen
2013–2011 – Earlier works, Baghold and Copenhagen NV

CURATORIAL & PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

2016 – 100 Års Uro
2015 – Founder of SCENOGRAPHY
2013 – Editor and writer, scenografidk

SCENOGRAPHIC PRACTICE — SELECTED

Selected productions in Denmark and internationally, including:

  • Odense Theatre
  • Teatro di Roma
  • Czech National Theatre
  • Teatret ved Sorte Hest
  • Folketeatret