Underfoot/Overhead (Wasserman Projects)

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

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Can the Substrate Speak? (Dear Climate)

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.

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Dear Climate

2014 – ongoing

posters, sound, installations

Core Collaborators: Una Chaudhuri, Fritz Ertl, Oliver Kellhammer, Marina Zurkow
Web Development: Pat Shiu
Sound Design: Pejk Malinovski
Typography: Nancy Nowacek
Voice Overs: Eliza Foss, Seth Kanor, Jane Cramer

Supported by NYU Visual Arts Initiative Awards

http://www.dearclimate.net
This work is part of the project:

Dear Climate is exploring new modes of address through the creation of a collection of ”inner climate” tools. These tools—posters, audio meditations and letters—are designed to nudge participants toward new relations with the greater-than-human world. The free, downloadable posters use the language of agitprop and a “fast read” to create a jolt of relational suggestion. Alternately,…

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World Wind (bitforms gallery)

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.

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Whale Fall Feast (Dear Climate)

2021

Marine debris, plastic bags, metal signs, CNC cut wood, mini-golf turf

In collaboration with Blake Goble, B-Space
Documentation: Jakob Dahlin

Commissioned by Putting Green, NY

https://dearclimate.net/installations/whale-fall-feast
This work is part of the project:

When a whale dies and sinks, its carcass creates an entire ecosystem on the ocean floor, nourishing thousands of organisms. Ocean pollution affects this process and disrupts the food chain, impacting species from krill to whales. Whales are some of the longest living mammals on the planet, with lifespans from 10 to 200 years. When…

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Oceans Like Us (5 Manhattan West)

2021

Custom software animation, screens, custom poplar wood pallets

Sound Design: Scott Reitherman. Software: Sam Brenner. Animation: Marina Zurkow and Ewan Creed. Technology: James Schmitz. Documentation: Jakob Dahlin
Curated by Kendal Henry

Commissioned by @artsbrookfield

This work is part of the project:

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Boil the Ocean (ICA San Diego)

2021

Custom generative animation software, sound, screens, marine debris, wall drawings, custom wood scaffolds

Sound Design: Scott Reitherman. Software: Sam Brenner. Animation: Marina Zurkow and Ewan Creed. Technology: James Schmitz. Scaffold architecture: Keith Edwards. Documentation: Phillip Rittermann

Commissioned by the ICA San Diego

This work is part of the project:

Text by Guusje Sanders, curator: Aided by the constructed marine debris island, visitors can see, smell, touch, hear and taste their presence within the ocean. The installation invites participants to re-imagine their connections to the ocean and challenge their conditioned perspectives. By slowing down in a complex space of systems, an opportunity arises to assume…

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Wet Logic (bitforms gallery)

2020

Custom software, wall drawings, silkscreen prints, toilet, recycled nurdles, fishbowl fountain

bitforms gallery (link)
This work is part of the project:

Wet Logic, a collaborative exhibition by Marina Zurkow and Sarah Rothberg, presents a model of the world organized according to a wet, oceanic ideology rather than a dry, land-based paradigm.

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What is Happening

2020

Site-specific video installation (52 screens) at the Fulton Transit Center, New York

Created in collaboration with Sarah Rothberg

Commissioned by MTA Arts & Design.

Sarah Rothberg and Marina Zurkow’s video project “WHAT IS HAPPENING” at Fulton Center combines site-specific drawings of the transit hub’s architectural elements with text and animated collage. Philosophical queries like “WHAT IS POSSIBLE” or “WHAT IS MOVING” prompt the minds of viewers passing through. These provocations are met with clever visual juxtapositions, such as a doughnut rising…

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More&More (Jugendstilsenteret og KUBE)

2019

Custom animation software, custom bathing suits, screens, shipping crates, plaster, 3D prints, mycelium, plexi shelving, custom wallpaper

In collaboration with Sarah Rothberg and Surya Mattu<br>
Software: Sam Brenner <br>
Web development: Neil Cline

Solo exhibition at Jugendstilsenteret og KUBE, Ålesund, Norway

This work is part of the project:

Part of the group exhibition, “Edge of the Sea”

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More&More (Maison Populaire)

2019

Custom bathing suits, custom wallpaper, custom postcards, custom website, laptop, desk, mannequins, postcard rack, salt

In collaboration with Sarah Rothberg and Surya Mattu<br>
Web development: Neil Cline

Group exhibition “Ici Sont Les Dragons” at Maison Populaire, Montreuil, France

https://www.maisonpop.fr/ici-sont-les-dragons-2-3-venez-comme-vous-etes
This work is part of the project:

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Rising Seas Jellyfish Snack Shack (LAX)

2019

Cannonball jellyfish, ice plant, kombu seaweed, condiments, laser-cut lettering, signage, tarp, stencil, plants

In collaboration with chef duo Hank and Bean

Commissioned by LENS (Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategy), IOES (Institute of Environment and Sustainability), UCLA

This work is part of the project:

A one-day pop up jellyfish jerky snack shack on the campus of UCLA. Serving Cannonball jellyfish jerky served with a choice of seasoning condiments reflective of 5 diverse regions susceptible to sea level rise: Haiti, the US Gulf coast, Sri Lanka/ S. India, Philippines, and the Netherlands. In addition, the snack shack served “invasive” ice…

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Signs, Wonders, Blunders (Dear Climate)

2019

Locust and red oak wood, vinyl plaques, lettering

Dear Climate Collective, in collaboration with Jennie Carlisle, Curator and Director of the Smith Gallery, Appalachian State
Fabrication: Roger Atkins of Cove Creek Woodworks
Fresh cut locust and red oak wood donated by Ian Snider of Mountain Works Sustainable Development
Documentation: Cheryl Zibisky

Commissioned by Climate Stories Collaborative at Appalachian State

This work is part of the project:

“What do I need to know for the planet to thrive?” This question animates “Signs, Wonders, Blunders,” an installation of 13 signposts, each with three multi-directional signs, located at interesting and suggestive locations on campus. The signposts use book titles and common phrases to create a set of playful proposals for new ways of understanding…

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General Assembly (Dear Climate)

2018

Flags, cedar posts

Core Collaborators: Una Chaudhuri, Fritz Ertl, Oliver Kellhammer, Marina Zurkow
Curated by Nora Lawrence
Documentation: Jerry L. Thompson

Commissioned by Storm King Arts Center, New Windsor, New York
For the “Indicators: Artists on Climate Change” exhibition at Storm King

https://dearclimate.net/installations/general-assembly
This work is part of the project:

We want to create a public space that signals—and celebrates—a future world of multi-species collaboration. At the UN General Assembly, there’s a seat for every nation. In our General Assembly of the future, there’ll be a seat at the table for all species and all things.

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A Field Guide to the Place Where You Are

2017

Site specific installation
Ladder, binoculars, stake flags, laminated key, toolbox

In collaboration with Floating Studio for Dark Ecologies (FSDE)
(Nicholas Hubbard, Rebecca Lieberman, Marina Zurkow) with Chester Dols (fabrication)

First created for Works on Water Triennial, 3LD, New York

Floating Studio for Dark Ecologies (FSDE) dreams of an ongoing and open library of citizen-driven field guides. The aim of these guides is to embrace the everythingness that—like it or not, pretty or not, dirty or not—constitutes the place where we are. We believe the first step to change requires an unblinkered intimacy with the…

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More&More (bitforms gallery)

2016
Custom animated software in custom steel powder-coated housing, sculptures, shelving, crates, bathing suits, website, books

Production: Sarah Rothberg
Bathing suit/web site collaborators: Sarah Rothberg, Surya Mattu
Software: Sam Brenner
Web development: Neil Cline
Studio assistance: Ariana Martinez

Commissioned in part by Borusan Contemporary
This work is part of the project:

The ocean makes up 71 percent of our planet’s surface. So, how is it that we know more about Mars than the marine environments of Earth? As impenetrable as the deep oceans are to humans, we imperviously live in a black box of international shipping, reducing the ocean to a surface rather than an environmental…

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All About Logistics

2016
This work is part of the project:

Surya Mattu, Sarah Rothberg, and I had a Process Space residency through LMCC on Governor’s Island. We spent a few months traveling by boat(s) to meet, study, and discuss logistics. We took Matthew Sparke’s free online class on Globalization and Personal Impacts, and read Deborah Cowan’s The Deadly Life of Logistics. We participated in Open…

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Necrocracy (project overview)

2012-2014

Project consisting of videos, dinners, software, sculptures, public art engagements, printed matter

Diverseworks gallery text by John Pluecker

Commissioned by Diversweworks, Houston Texas
Supported by a 2011 John F Simon Guggenheim Fellowship

This work is part of the project:

Necrocracy is a meditation on geology, time, nature and petrochemical production. First exhibited at Diverseworks in Houston, Texas, Necrocracy featured newly commissioned video animation, drawing and sculpture. Questioning the division between the natural and the human inherited from the Romantic era, the works navigate between human manufacturing of petroleum-based products, ecology, and the geological chronology…

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