MARINA ZURKOW
2025
Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz
Animation: Ewan Creed
Research: David Guzman
Architectural installation: Blake Goble
Mural Painting: Frey Stahler and Josiah McCloud
Courtesy bitforms gallery
Documentation photos: Yi Hsuan Lai
Marina Zurkow: Parting Worlds presents three digital works featured both inside the gallery and on the adjacent terrace, each of which explores the inextricable weave of ecological and societal systems. Mesocosm (Wink, TX) (2012) and The Earth Eaters (2025) focus on the environmental consequences of relentless resource extraction. Her installation for the Hyundai Terrace Commission, The River is a Circle (2025), is…
2025
Commissioned in 2025 for The Hyundai Terrace at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The River is a Circle is a generative animation that portrays the Hudson River as a layered scene, dividing the view between life above and below the water’s surface. The animated imagery continuously shifts based on algorithmic probabilities, incorporating real-time weather, seasonal…
2025
Generative software animation, computer, monitors, custom plinth.
The Earth Eaters is a software-driven animated “fairy tale” that imagines the ongoing cycle of extracting raw materials from the earth to produce weapons of war. In response to the ongoing characterization of ecocide as “collateral damage,” the generative algorithms behind the work create an ever-changing environment that feature islands forming and disintegrating, a menagerie of…
2024-ongoing
Digital collage
Prints on Epson Kozo paper
52″x24″
Edition of 5
Cry, Landscape is a series-as-practice of imagining the sky crying, the land crumbling in a posture of grief. Anthropomorphism-adjacent, I seek to conjure into being other planetary subjectivities, and expressions of sadness by planetary constituents, rather than consider “the world” as indifferent and “resilient.” These images were created using digital collage techniques. They fuse wonder…
2024
Digital print on Kozo Thick 110 gsm paper, 90” x 36”
Made in collaboration with Dall-e2 and Firefly
Commissioned by Wasserman Projects, Detroit
2024
Digital AI prints, generative software works
Software works in collaboration with James Schmitz
Exhibition presented by Wasserman Projects, Detroit, with generous support from the Knight Foundation,
Wasserman Projects (link)
Two-person show with Jasmine Murrell. Curation: Alison Wong Special thanks to Gary Wasserman, Ian Rummell, and John Charnota Photos by PD Rearick, courtesy Wasserman Projects
2024
Broadsheet posters, dimensions variable
Dear Climate (Una Chaudhuri and Marina Zurkow)
Art Souterrain Festival, Montreal. Heather Davis, Curator. Spring 2024
https://festival2024.artsouterrain.com/en/environment-do-you-hear/
This work is part of the project:
Can the Substrate Speak?, a piece created for Art Souterrain, expands a key question in postcolonial studies (“Can the SubalternsSpeak?” Gayatri Spivak), to planetary environmental politics.
2024
Deck of cards, gameboard, table, chairs
THE ICEBERG is a card and conversation game created by Abigail Simon and Marina Zurkow that invites players to consider the beautiful trouble of complexity, with a particular focus on climate change. Like a tarot deck, the images on the cards of The Iceberg invite the user to consider a problem, give a voice to…
2023
Risograph printed book, 96 pages. Signed. Edition of 250
Published by the Desert Humanities Initiative, Institute for Humanities Research, Arizona State University
Editors: Ron Broglio and Marina Zurkow
Drawings: Marina Zurkow
Commissioned by the Desert Humanities Initiative, Arizona State University
Desert Humanities (link)
This contemplative field guide is “designed to help orient you to the desert, like yoga poses for being with the land.”
2023
White-line woodcuts
Ink on archival paper
Open edition variable
White-line woodcuts are multicolor images printed from a single block of wood. Also called Provincetown prints, they hover between monoprints and Japanese-style multi-block woodcuts.
2023
Custom software (color, silent)
Edition of 5, 1 AP
The Breath Eaters 2.0 is an an animated, custom software artwork that visualizes PM2.5 pollutants produced by wildfire and fossil fuel plant emissions. Inspired by an open source AI image of a World War II propaganda map and presented as a live, generative composition, the work demonstrates how particulate pollution is carried into the high atmosphere…
2023
Untitled 1 – 6
Linocut, two-color
12 x 9 in / 30.5 x 22.9 cm
Open Edition Variable (OE)
Caligo ink on Yasutomo Sketch
2-color hand-carved linocut prints.
2023
Custom software (color, silent)
In collaboration with James Schmitz
In collaboration with James Schmitz
Commissioned by Visions 2030: Earth Edition for CalArts, 2023
This version of The Breath Eaters (diptych) offers two varying views of the Earth using data. The work addresses human impact on earth systems, fire management practices, and the planetary poetics of wind.
2023
Digital print on rice paper + NFT
35.4 x 59.1 in
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
Made in collaboration with Dall-e
Death 1 and Death 2 were originally commissioned by curator Linda Weintraub for Beyond Death, a special issue in the journal Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts
Death Work, entirely created with Dall-e, was originally commissioned by curator Linda Weintraub for Beyond Death, a special issue in the journal Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts
2023
Custom software (color, silent)
Generative, non-interactive
93 editions, 6 artist editions, 1 publisher proof
In collaboration with Ira Greenberg
Oystercraft website design: Pat Shiu
Part of the exhibition “Chain Reaction” on Feral File, curated by Christiane Paul
Created for the online exhibition “Chain Reaction,” curated by Christiane Paul on the Feral File platform.
2022
Digital prints, generative software works
Software works in collaboration with James Schmitz
Exhibited at bitforms gallery, New York
bitforms gallery (link)
World Wind is an exhibition featuring artworks by Marina Zurkow and collaborative, generative pieces by Zurkow and James Schmitz.
2022
25 drawings
Charcoal on Legion Stonehenge archival paper
18″x24″
Also available as digital prints
Ron Broglio, author. Illustrations, Marina Zurkow
Commissioned by the author. Published by University of Minnesota Press
Animals are staging a revolution—they’re just not telling us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming battleships, this book threads together news accounts and more in a powerful and timely work of creative, speculative nonfiction that imagines a revolution stirring and asks how humans can be a part of it.
2022
Unpublished article
At this moment of cascading and interconnected crises, a radically different politics is required. our essay is a provocation – part thought experiment, part call to action – that asks: what would it look like to organize a multi-species union?