Jenine Marsh

Working within the context of a culture rooted in patriarchy and capitalism, my practice engages physical contact as both the producer and site of reciprocally responsive interactions between material bodies. Using mainly low-tech, hands-on approaches, my immersive installations and intimate sculptural arrangements often involve disembodied casts of my own hands, preserved flowers, and found ubiquitous objects. Recent works using mixed-currency coins shift contact into realms of mechanical mutilation, forgery and destruction. In their reimagined state as sculptural entities, coins become an interface for the deconstruction and dispossession of subjugated identity.

Jenine Marsh, Proximity Flowers­ (1/55), 2019. Flowers, synthetic rubber, UV varnish, wire. 36 x 6 x 7 cm / 14 x 2.5 x 3”. Photo credit: Simon Veres

AGO: What was the inspiration for this artwork or series?
Marsh: I’m fairly obsessed with a few science fiction and fantasy books, which are neither utopic nor dystopic, but are instead engaged in efforts to speculatively reimagine the authors’ worlds from within. The idea and feeling that "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism” (Žižek/Jameson), has been rejected, hijacked and twisted in these stories. Capitalism, as entwined and dependent as it is upon constructions of race, gender and class, is given an outside or a beside, where its definitions can be untied and rewoven. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness, N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy and Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood series are old and new favorites that I have been rereading this year, as reminders that alternatives can and do exist, although our global fight for health, safety and justice can feel like yelling into a bottomless void. I bring these motives along with me into my work, where through sculptural acts of re-figuring and disfigurement, predetermined systems of value and significance might be derailed to instead embody liminal realms of illicit agency.

AGO: Tell us about a place or a space where you most love making your work?
Marsh: I used to have a live/work space in the Coffin Factory, which was a longstanding hub of artists, musicians and weirdos in downtown Toronto. The building was crumbling into the ground and all the tenants had been living under constant threat of eviction for something like ten years - but my rent was $900 and I absolutely loved being there. When that space finally succumbed to luxury condo development in March ‘19, I put my stuff into storage and spent the rest of the year living out of a huge suitcase, subletting apartments and studios wherever there was space or support. Moving every month or two between Toronto, Berlin, Athens, Vienna, Los Angeles and Montreal, I found each consecutive spot through the generosity of friends and friends-of-friends. Continuing to make work within a pretty modest budget necessitated a lot of flexibility, but I was lucky enough to be able to use that uprooted-ness as an excuse to travel. With Toronto’s incredibly low ethical standard for landlords, developers and city councillors, this kind of flexibility is obviously an unfortunate and sometimes traumatic necessity for renters. Since then, I have had to leave yet another affordable building full of artists’ live/works in Toronto, also due to landlord neglect and greed. This instability is something that so many artists have had to learn to expect and survive, over and over. At the moment I am very privileged to be back in the city in a new apartment inherited from a friend, and using my patio as a studio until something affordable pops up.

AGO: Are you in dialogue with any other artists or creative peers about your practice? If so, how does this dialogue feed your work?
Marsh: My relationships with artists seem to have an added dimension.  It feels like the best conversations don’t necessarily happen between us, two artists talking about art, but between our work, between my practice and theirs. One project might in some way respond to another’s, carrying out a material dialogue using slightly different languages, across space, questioning, speculating, back and forth.

Intimately knowing both an artist and their work is something that I think is actually really incredible. Knowing their work doesn’t simply complete my understanding of them; instead the art/ist’s “self” gets complicated, loosened from singularity and solidity, into something plural, edgeless and metamorphic. These responsive relationships, between works and self, between materials, processes, objects and body, provide a driving undercurrent in my work, as well as, I think, in some of my closest peers’ practices. Since covid and social distancing, and following George Floyd’s murder and ongoing global demands for social justice, I’ve been mostly reading and thinking rather than making and socializing. The violence, contagion and intimacy implied by physical contact leaves me with a lot to think about until the hugs and kisses of the art world become safe again.

Jenine Marsh, Gap in fence, fist in pocket (detail), 2020. Hydrocal, gravel, sand. Scale variable. Photo credit: Max Marshall

Jenine Marsh (b. 1984, Calgary CA) is an artist based in Toronto. Solo and two-person exhibitions include: COOPER COLE, Franz Kaka and 8-11, Toronto; Lulu, Mexico City; Centre CLARK and Vie d'ange, Montreal; Entrée, Bergen; Interface, Oakland CA; and Stride Gallery, Calgary. Group exhibitions include: Essex Flowers, NYC; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Frieze London; OSL contemporary, Oslo; Rupert, Vilnius; sans titre (2016), Marseille; Gianni Manhattan, Vienna; Murmurs, Night Gallery and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles. She has participated in residencies at AiR Bergen USF Verftet, Rupert, the Banff Centre, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work is represented by COOPER COLE. 

Follow Jenine @jeninemarsh