Marina Seyffert

My work feels almost automatic; its construction derives from a need to express or release internal fears and anxieties. I often describe it as confessional, as when I make work it is vulnerable, personal, and intimate. Recently, I have become very interested in the experiential, primarily in the relationship that can be created between the bodily experience of the viewer and the bodily characteristics of the work, and how the two can connect and emphasize each other. I try to evoke a bodily interaction between the viewer and the work even in my recent drawings and paintings, which reference the body either in scale, material, or presentation. My installation work is frequently reliant upon spaces which are hidden, yet readily accessible—sites which may be seen by anyone, but will only be seen by those who look. I like to create a bodily response through the physical experience of walking towards or looking through something in order to find, uncover, or extract meaning. Though the work is personal, the secrets of it are rarely explicitly revealed; I am hesitant to give it all away, so there is a certain tension between my need for release and expression, and my hesitance to allow for full vulnerability. The bodily experience of needing to approach, peer into, or uncover the meaning of the work in some way reflects this tension, and itself evokes a sense of an internal/external relationship, which creates its own significance as the viewer becomes the participant.

LAUNCH Invitational

2019 - 2020,
Artist Resident