As the exhibition title suggests, “Hypnagogia” describes the experience of the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep. The hypnagogic state of consciousness includes lucid thoughts, lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis. The artist’s aims to integrate this notion into the heart of this body of work.
Thurn und Taxis’s core interest lies in exploring the psyche. Masks for example, create a variety of identities. They can be comic, carnevalesque, grotesque or strange, hiding or revealing. Maria Thurn und Taxis uses collages as a first reference before to add water- colour or paint to complete her investigations. As source material she uses ethnographical books as well as fashion magazines to mention a few. In her own words Maria uses images “to concoct my own universe of phantasmagoric beings that ignite questions on our humanity”.