Artist Statement

I create abstract sculptures and reliefs out of foodstuffs and organic materials that only remain “fresh” in consistency, color, and aggregate form very briefly upon completion. The performance of making and the completed piece is filmed, photographed, and scanned, and that visual content sources the final phase of work as an installation of visual mediums and added sound. I’m now introducing live performance into my exhibitions– acts of production, presentation, and gift economy activations.

I developed this area of practice from a lifelong fascination of the intersections between body, mind, science, and tradition. I continuously experiment with their boundaries by rearranging, blurring, and breaking their connections. This mindset has been deeply influenced  by a personal journey overcoming a debilitating eating disorder and distorted fixation on body image. Akin to Louise Bourgeois’s approach to art-making as a form of psychological processing, I draw upon a complex history with food; this fraught relationship is transformed by conceptually shifting the purpose of food from an act of nutrient consumption to an act of cognitive consumption.

Food literally keeps us alive, yet in first world societies it’s reduced to stimulative goods and services with inadequate nutritive basics, poorly refueling the ever-running body. I also co-opt food to transform its role in daily life. In many projects I materially separate components of an iconic meal and through traditional artistic techniques create elaborate sculptures that don’t visually refer to original appearances, nor to the very intention of food. After reducing food to resource material, I elevate it to an object of art, a role with limitless value and esteem.

In personal terms, my practice shifts the nature of food from antagonist to partner, admonishment to nourishment. For my ongoing series 2nd Brain Sessions, nonstop 18-hour sculpture sessions metamorphose food from a source of anxiety into an alluring story, with emotional intensity flowing through body intelligence– my hands initiate, calculate, and complete countless moments of detailed construction. These performances and the image-based results compel viewers to experience food as playful, enigmatic, visceral, evocative. Through my art-based consideration of food, the viewer automatically distributes the pieces into areas of a thinking brain usually reserved for high cognition and memory, as is art– both are critical to a healthy lifetime.

My influences include Gille Deleuze’s “generative wandering” and rhizomatic framework, valuing unexpected connections over linear paths; the profound essays in Oliver Vodeb’s Food Democracy; MOLD Magazine’s articles on food insecurity and wellness; hyper-visual movies including Marco Ferreri’s 1973 La Grande Bouffe and the 1966 sci-fi inner-body journey Fantastic Voyage by Richard Fleischer; and the late artist and educator Ed Levine’s 2005 essays Uncovering the Body exploring unmitigated art experiences and body intelligence.

I invite viewers into a sensory dialogue about our relationship with food– the prime sustenance of identity, culture, and experienced reality. That intrapersonal relationship is the genesis, evolution, and destiny of all human activity and social constructs.

Bio

A native of Miami, Marilyn received her BFA in 2014 from The FIU Honors College, majoring in Video Art and Art History.

In addition to her art practice, she is also a professional arts documentary filmmaker with direction, camera and editing credits on films shot internationally for The Harpo Foundation, ICA Miami, Locust Projects, The Margulies Collection and The Miami Design District. 

Marilyn has performed at The Nerve: Performance Art Festival, The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, FilmGate: Interactive Media Festival, Miami Beach Urban Studios: Digital Oculus, and Edge Zones: Miami Performance International Festival. Her sculptural / video work was shown at Place Project Group’s pop-up at The Miami Design District and at The Sagamore Art Week 2020 exhibitions.