Mariya Ilieva

Mariya works mainly with digital 2D animation but she also likes playing with analogue techniques such as cut-out animation and frame by frame animation on paper.

In her work, Mariya likes to explore the peculiarities of human character and the way people’s personalities express themselves visually; together with how they may act as a manifestation of larger issues in society.

Her graduation project, a 2D animated comedy called A Kibik, an Odd Bird(2020), started as a personal journey to better understand her contradictory notions towards a negative male stereotype that exist in Bulgarian society called a “kibik”(Bulgarian vernacular for a loafer).

Although inspired by a character specific to Bulgarian culture, the aim of the film is to allude to a universal socio-cultural male stereotype and to invite the audience to identify such examples of odd birds around them; simultaneously giving them time to reflect on the reasons of their formation and the nature of stereotyping itself. Through this work Mariya aims to address themes of tension between individual and collective, social engineering and the human costs of huge political shifts - leaving the question, what do we do with those unable to adopt?

Mariya’s next project will marry her interests in illustration, cooking, documentary animation, poetry and the notion of nostalgia, hoping to create a semi-autobiographical illustrated book along with a short animated film based on her childhood memories of blissfully idle summers spent in rural Bulgaria. She started developing the concept while still at the Royal College of Art.