Vom Abgrund sprechen wir dort, wo es vom Grund weggeht und uns ein Grund fehlt, insofern wir nach dem Grunde suchen und darauf ausgehen, auf einen Grund zu kommen.
— Martin Heidegger, Die Sprache
Maria Theresa Barbist, born in Tyrol, Austria, and descended from a lineage of ski instructors, spent her childhood in alpine environments. These formative experiences inform her artistic practice, which places performances and paintings across diverse geographies. Barbist holds a PhD in Psychology with postdoctoral training in Psychotherapy and worked extensively at Innsbruck Hospital, specializing in trauma therapy for immigrant Turkish women who experienced abuse. In 2010, she participated in a movement-based art therapy workshop in San Francisco that focused on releasing trauma stored in the body; an experience that proved pivotal in shaping her artistic direction.
The series DER GRUND AUF DEM ICH STEHE [The Ground on Which I Stand] traces psychological transformation through five stages of trauma healing in psychotherapy: Identify, Confront, Release, Change, and Growth. As an Austrian immigrant to the United States, Barbist explores the emotional complexities of leaving her homeland and parts of her identity.
These works mark her first use of tarp as a painting surface, chosen for its flexibility, resistance, and non-absorbent qualities, which she calls “more ground than surface.” Abstract color fields are reworked with oil sticks to define borders and shapes. “Polaroid skins” are then added, anchoring each piece to a specific place that becomes increasingly abstracted, resembling fading memory. The final layer introduces language: “Grund” and “Abgrund” [ground and abyss], terms drawn from Heidegger and phonetically similar in German. Barbist explains, “What holds and what gives way… the abyss is when the familiar breaks, when what should carry us no longer does.”
Barbist transports the paintings to locations of personal and symbolic resonance, such as her abandoned childhood home, alpine landscapes in Austria, urban San Francisco, and the Miami shoreline. At each site, she engages in performative dialogue with the work, reenacting the gestures that shaped the paintings. The first performance occurs in her Miami backyard, where the domestic setting is unexpectedly joined by her cat. In Austria, she performs in the overgrown garden of her childhood home, using the deteriorating house and encroaching weeds to process the loss of her parents.
The third performance takes place at Hafelekar, 7,657 feet above sea level, where a bird’s flight poetically signifies liberation from borders and release. By orienting herself toward all cardinal points, Barbist explores orientation, place, and grounding. Over time, the paint peels from the tarp due to folding and travel, mirroring fading memory and the erosion of a migrant’s sense of belonging. During her most recent visit, she was called an “Auslandsösterreicherin” – no longer fully Austrian, having been away too long. Barbist reflects, “The land has washed off my skin, just as the paint lifts from the tarp.”
VON DER SCHATZKAMMER INS PARADIES [From the Treasure Chamber to Paradise] documents Barbist’s relocation within the United States and shifts in her psychological state. The term “Schatzkammer” [the treasure chamber] evokes interiority and guardedness. The related video emphasizes breathing and bodily awareness. In contrast, “Ins Paradies” [to paradise] suggests an opening or portal.
The vertical axis dividing the work acts as a spine, providing support and flexibility. The composition recalls early world maps or ancient sky charts, with dual circles representing both hemispheres. The initial performance was filmed at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, where Barbist’s daily ferry commute shaped her relationship to the city, approaching it from the water in a constant flux of arrival and departure. The Paradies video was produced at the Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, where she has found a community.
VON DEN BLAUEN BERGEN KOMME ICH [From the Blue Mountains I Come] is inspired by a nursery tune her father used to play. Barbist thought it was an old German folk song but later learned it originated in the United States. That contradiction stayed with her: showing how something can feel like home yet originate elsewhere. The painted lines echo the ridgelines of the mountains Barbist comes from.
The figures before them float in space rather than being grounded. “Growing up in Austria, the abyss was never abstract but always there, visible,” says Barbist. Hiking in the mountains is dangerous, and a wrong move could mean a fall into a ravine. This is the only painting that does not touch the ground. It hovers, suspended, holding tension between grounding and release. Here, the Polaroids function like buoys, forming a loose network of orientation markers around the figures.
Across the series, a gradual shift unfolds from seeking stable ground toward navigating instability. Earlier works engage directly with the anxiety of footing, the proximity of the abyss, and the risk in each step. Later works, ICH GLEITE DURCHS LEBEN WIE EINE MEERJUNGFRAU DURCHS WASSER [I Slide Through Life Like a Mermaid Through Water], filmed at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, and HERE, performed at Lake Achensee, introduce water as an alternative condition: fluid and unstable yet capable of holding a body no longer fixed but buoyant, learning to remain at the surface.
Water is both memory and release, carrying grief and forgiveness and allowing transformation. Systems of orientation re-emerge through cardinal directions and symbolic markers, no longer as fixed coordinates but as internalized points of reference, like an embodied compass shaped by experience. Both works present the artist’s body as an increasingly discernible figure. The figure in the last painting, representing her in a red dress holding a shield adorned with the Tyrolean eagle and a spear, resembles a warrior yet also appears vulnerable, floating on a surface without a stable foundation. Grounding is now understood as something produced by the artist through movement and determination. “HERE is not a destination so much as a declaration.”
