Live Performance Of Nadja Verena Marcin's OPHELIA Comes to Minnesota Street Project

Opening at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco with a live performance in the atrium on Saturday, March 3 at 4pm, the two-year world tour of Nadja Verena Marcin's conceptual live performance and video sculpture OPHELIA, continues. Awarded a Franklin Furnace Grant and supported by a successful Kickstarter Campaign?, the work investigates the relationship between the human destruction of the biosphere, and the history of female hysteria-while speaking to the democratizing power of the meme.

Following the live performance, an immersive video installation featuring the video sculpture of OPHELIA, will remain on view in Minnesota Street Project's gallery 211 through March 31. In conjunction with the SF presentation of the project-curated by Amy Kisch of AKArt-the accompanying programming will be supported by the Goethe Institut San Francisco-including a panel discussion, OPHELIA: REBEL MEME TO SYSTEMS OF POWER & OPPRESSION, with Dena Beard, Executive Director of The Lab; Dorka Keehn, San Francisco Arts Commissioner and Principal KEEHN ON ART; Joseph Becker, Associate Curator of Architecture and Design at SFMOMA (TBC); and Nadja Verena Marcin, Artist, on Thursday, March 22, 6-8pm at Minnesota Street Project.

OPHELIA was first unveiled as video-sculpture during Art Basel Miami Beach 2017 at CONTEXT Art Miami, and highlighted both in Artnet's Everything You Need to Know About All 23 Artfairs at Art Basel Miami Beach and Hyperallergic's Your Concise Guide Miami Art Week 2017. The live performance premiere of OPHELIA opened the New Ear Festival of sound and performance art in New York this February. Floating in a salt-water solution in a life-size stainless steel sarcophagus, wearing a breathing mask and Ophelia's dress, Marcin will quote text from Daniil Kharms' The Werld about our limited human subjective perception. Given the climate changes of the 21st century, in which the world is literally drowning, OPHELIA points to a dystopian future where life must be undertaken inside an underwater world. The project visualizes the fragility of our bodies compared to the forces of nature-in this case water. The image of Ophelia inside an advanced, constructed reality-unable to be heard, kept alive through a mask and encircled by technology, serves as a metaphor for the Anthropocene Period in which we currently live. The project serves as the counterpoint to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in which as half-blinded entities, subjectivity guides our perceptions. In contrast, the art and science behind OPHELIA places us on the verge of recovery and discovery as communal effort and responsibility.

Ophelia, the ingénue driven mad by grief and unrequited love in Shakespeare's Hamlet, has captured the imaginations of worldwide artists, writers, and theorists over the years. Among the most recognized images of Ophelia is Sir John Everett Millais' masterpiece Ophelia (1851-2). It depicts the tragic figure moments before her death-the picturesque beauty singing her last song before the weight of her gown pulls her to the bottom of the riverbed. The poster girl for hysteria, she epitomizes a passionate, young woman, pressured by society to the point of a mental breakdown. Invoking the historical icons of Millais' Ophelia, Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Jeff Koons, 1985), and The Werld (Daniil Kharms, 1939), the modular sculpture-transformable both for the live performance and the video sculpture-is designed in collaboration with New York architect and co-founder of Kunstraum LLC, Fernando Schrupp.

As part of the San Francisco iteration of the project, Marcin also will lead a workshop March 16-18, exploring performance and video art as ways of reflecting on social and political constructs, human behavior and elemental emotions at The Growlery-where Marcin will be completing a month-long artist residency. Following the SF presentation of the project, OPHELIA will travel to Nube Gallery in Santa Cruz, Bolivia (April); SomoS in Berlin as part of the Gallery Weekend Berlin (April / May); Moltekerei e.V. in Cologne, Germany as part of the DC Open Gallery Weekend (September); AlbumArte in Rome, Italy, curated by Giulia Casalini of Arts Feminism Queer (November / December); Museum Schauwerk in Sindelfingen, Germany (February 2019). In addition to the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by Jerome Foundation, the work was made possible, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and with general operating support from the New York State Council on the Arts. OPHELIA is part of the NYFA - New York Foundation of the Arts Fiscal Sponsorship Program. Supporters are provided with international tax deductible donation letters via the project's NYFA website. For more information, or to become a sponsor, partner, or other inquiries, please contact Nadja Verena Marcin Studio: nvmstudio@gmail.com.

DATES + LOCATIONS
Live Performance: Saturday, March 3, 4pm sharp
Minnesota Street Project Atrium
1275 Minnesota Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
[RSVP HERE]

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 3, 6-8 pm
Exhibition: March 3 - 31, 2018
Minnesota Street Project, Gallery 211
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am-6pm

Workshop OPHELIA: REBEL MEME TO SYSTEMS OF POWER & OPPRESSION Led by Nadja Verena Marcin: Friday, March 16 - Sunday, March 18, 12-6 pm
The Growlery Residency
235 Broderick Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
[Register Here]

Panel Discussion OPHELIA: REBEL MEME TO SYSTEMS OF POWER & OPPRESSION
with Dena Beard, Director, The Lab; Dorka Keehn, San Francisco Arts Commissioner and Principal, Keehn on Art; Joseph Becker, Associate Curator Architecture and Design, SFMOMA (TBC); and Nadja Verena Marcin, Artist: Thursday, March 22, 6-8pm

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