MARI LAURI

Mari Lauri’s artistic practice is rooted in an early engagement with painting, a visual language first acquired in childhood and consciously resumed after a prolonged period of professional activity in psychology. Trained as a psychologist and certified art therapist, Lauri’s formative years were shaped by sustained work with children, including children with special needs, as well as in orphanages and shelters for mothers and infants. This experience fostered a discipline of close observation, emotional attainment, and psychological depth that continues to inform her artistic approach.

Alongside her professional practice, Lauri developed a sustained interest in photography as a way to observe her environment. Central to this inquiry was the psychological phenomenon of Jamais vu—the moment in which familiar objects and spaces are suddenly perceived as strange or newly encountered. This altered perceptual state, marked by the sensation of “seeing for the first time,” became a significant conceptual and visual catalyst, activating a heightened sensitivity to form, atmosphere, and affect.

For eight years, Lauri worked in early childhood education, founding and directing a kindergarten in 2016. In 2024, she made a decisive shift, transferring leadership of the institution to a leading specialist in the field in order to fully re-engage with her artistic practice. She currently works from her studio, where she approaches painting as a meditative, intuitive process. Rather than working through predetermined imagery, Lauri lets intuition supersede conscious intention. Forms emerge gradually, guided by affective states rather than narrative or symbolic logic. Objects are stripped of their referential meanings and reconstituted as visual phenomena - lines, colours, volumes, and spatial tensions. Sensitivity, both inward and outward, remains central to her methodology, positioning the work as an embodied response to perception and experience.

In the spring of 2025, Lauri participated in her first group exhibition at the alternative art space RAUM (Tbilisi), as part of the duo presentation Seen. In the same year, she also took part in the group exhibition Still They Paint at Window Project (Tbilisi).