Zoë Marden
Mermania ~ Tales of Tentacularity (the tentacles of COVID Capitalism, a work in progress…)
2020
Single- channel video
20’24’’
Zoë Marden
Tentacle Erotica
2020
Single- channel video
2’43’’
Mermainia: Tales of Tentacularity (the tentacles of COVID Capitalism) a work in progress… is a live performance on multiple platforms layered with pre-recorded fragments that was first streamed live in June 2020. It is part of a wider research project by Zoë Marden that has many different iterations and forms. The performance lecture gathers together her research on post-human feminisms and the ways in which the mythologies around mermaids and other aquatic beings bleed into our understanding of contemporary gender roles. The figure of a mermaid blurs boundaries between women and fish, femininity and ferocity, land and sea, human and other. They appear in stories as a creature that is neither here nor there, neither human nor fish. A gender fluid figure for the queer imagination.
About Zoë Marden：
Zoë Marden (b. 1985, Hong Kong) is a London-based artist, filmmaker and writer, working with performance, video, text, sound, sculpture and installation. She graduated with an MA in moving image from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2018. Her work is research based and is concerned with where intersectional feminism overlaps with the post colonial. Her intimate performances play with the voice, activating soundscapes of desire and vulnerability.
Zoë is part of the CAMPerVAN collective with Samuel Doeuk and Fiontán Moran, in which we investigate the queering of spaces through performance. The CAMPerVAN is a transportable queer performance, and LGBTQ community event space that can be deployed anywhere in the world to bring performance art, film screening, panel discussion & workshop into the public realm.
Marden’s recent solo exhibitions include Becoming Creature, Kong Art Space in partnership with Young Soy Gallery, Hong Kong (2023); and Marine Lovers…their fishy beginnings, V.O. Curations, London (2021). Selected recent group exhibitions and performances include Under Blue Shade, Roman Road, London (2023), Becoming The Wild Thing, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022); Becoming Creature, Tabula Rasa Gallery, London (2022); Born to make you happy, The Residence Gallery, London (2022); Queer to the Bank, Galleria Fonti, Naples (2021-2022); Futureless, SomoS, Berlin (2020); and Stay LIVE at Home, Performistanbul (2020).