Mariechen Danz
The human body is at the center of Mariechen Danz’s practice, which utilizes sculpture, drawing, costume design, and performances, among others, to consider the transmission of knowledge. By considering the legibility and hierarchy of signs, Danz merges Mesoamerican glyphs and modern manufactured materials such as incised metal plates that resemble computer motherboards. Her work attempts to heighten the worth of subjectivity in discourse, and acknowledge that even technology is an emotional economy. Even value systems have become sentimental in the ways fertility totems and amulets of the ancients held personal and ceremonial value. Her performances summon science-fiction, cult ritual, the gendered body and the ways in which language has the ability to be simultaneously expressive and incapable of immediate translation.
Danz performed at the 10th OPEN International Performance Art Festival in Beijing, Younger than Jesus at the New Museum in 2009, and the Wight Biennial at Broad Art Center, Los Angeles, in 2008, among others. She has exhibited at institutions including Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany, Kunstverein Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany, LEAP, Berlin, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Kunsthaus Bergen, Germany, The Museum of Art and Design, New York, and Kunstverein Potsdam, Germany, to name a few. He was awarded a Karl Schmidt-Rottluff …
The human body is at the center of Mariechen Danz’s practice, which utilizes sculpture, drawing, costume design, and performances, among others, to consider the transmission of knowledge. By considering the legibility and hierarchy of signs, Danz merges Mesoamerican glyphs and modern manufactured materials such as incised metal plates that resemble computer motherboards. Her work attempts to heighten the worth of subjectivity in discourse, and acknowledge that even technology is an emotional economy. Even value systems have become sentimental in the ways fertility totems and amulets of the ancients held personal and ceremonial value. Her performances summon science-fiction, cult ritual, the gendered body and the ways in which language has the ability to be simultaneously expressive and incapable of immediate translation.
Danz performed at the 10th OPEN International Performance Art Festival in Beijing, Younger than Jesus at the New Museum in 2009, and the Wight Biennial at Broad Art Center, Los Angeles, in 2008, among others. She has exhibited at institutions including Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany, Kunstverein Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany, LEAP, Berlin, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Kunsthaus Bergen, Germany, The Museum of Art and Design, New York, and Kunstverein Potsdam, Germany, to name a few. He was awarded a Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Scholarship in 2014 and a Villa Romana Fellowship in 2013.
