Maria Guta holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Bucharest National University of Arts and a Master’s in Art Direction from the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL). Positioning herself behind and in front of the camera, she uses photography, video, performance and immersive and social media. Maria Guta’s work explores the mechanisms of producing and representing the self in the digital age, especially the construction of online personas as a strategic means of creating a private and public identity. She is particularly interested in ideals of beauty, immortality and the phenomenon of fame. The main influences on her work and aesthetics include American cinema, reality TV and pop culture.

Lola Lane, Maria Guta’s alter ego, has appeared in a variety of roles in the past few years. Previously, these transformations took place primarily on social media or in video and performance projects. For her Cahier, entitled “Loneliness Beside The Swimming Pool”, the artist tried to reassemble her old collection of cinema magazines and books, from which she scanned a large number of pictures. She then digitally manipulated the scanned images by replacing all the existing faces with her own, and finally reprinted everything in order to create a series of analog collages.

Within this compulsive collection of images, spread across 180 pages and resembling a fan-book, Lola Lane morphs into a significant number of celebrities and fictional characters spanning the past 100 years. The publication is also an artistic homage to the little-known actress Lola Lane and the pop culture that fueled Guta’s imagination since her early childhood.

Geneva-based artist and writer Fabienne Radi wrote the text for Maria Guta’s Cahier. In perfect harmony with the visual collages, she skillfully crafted a cut-up of texts that take us on a whirlwind tour of Lola Lane’s multiple lives. It’s like a compressed showcase of stars and “it girls” spanning the 1920s to 2020, from Joan Crawford to Britney Spears, with detours through the lives of Frances Farmer, Pamela Des Barres, Anna-Nicole Smith, and other intriguing characters who’ve experienced their fair share of decadence, tragedy, and roller-coaster journeys.

The publication can be ordered from Pro Helvetia at the following link:
https://prohelvetia.ch/en/order-form-cahiers-dartistes-2023/