I'm back /  by Nicole Marroquin

I go back to the studio for the first time in several months today. I am nervous, like seeing a former lover after a long time. Do I look ok? What will I say first? I want to be confident. The difference is, I make my loves by hand, and they are what I want them to be, how I want them to look. They are not ideal, and neither should you be.

ALL trips to the store are fear of the intensity of what I am working on. Classic behaviors. This was not meant to be an interrogation of myself and avoidance techniques, fears of commitment, but alas. Facing one is facing all.

Poke holes in clay and fill with water- 8 bags, then shelve; begin opening boxes and finding supplies and shelving; inflate wheels on cart; replace bulbs; locate working outlets and determine how many orange cords i need; bring 1-2-3 primer and respirator; paint part of the floor in kiln room; bring rolling caster cart for small kiln; make a head;

In order to feel whole, I have to locate all the parts and make, remake, make and remake. they don't need to be a single piece, but the act of meditation brings fragments of ideas together. showing relationships between ideas simply by placing them in proximity on a shelf is the payoff. that delicate broken innards can be translated by hand to crude mud and then transformed by fire into something that is seen as an object on it's own makes me think that this act of translation is more closely related to design than art. Purpose: making the unsexy parts unintelligible invisible and encoded in something so that the subjects aren't taken into the mouths of others freely.

Today i will remake an object, formerly known as an object of my affection, of my love, that i loved. As usual. I’m so excited and happy…

/  by Nicole Marroquin

I want to describe the changes, but I cannot find the proper combination of words. My joy and pain have multiplied. matched by the intense need I feel to regain my center because after the universe took me down, smeared me in dirt, buried me, i will never take anything for granted again. I am very receptive to the good things. And I can let myself feel bad for the past. Healing time. Crying and laughing a lot. And I just ran a mile in 12.5 minutes.

Things could not get weirder. I am sending all the love I am getting back out into the universe.

/  by Nicole Marroquin

I'm working on a proposal for a group to travel, mark territory, record and document the spaces between spaces, and then assess the shift in identity when entering one space or another. For youth. Hansel and Gretel meets Jeremy Wood. Resulting in 2 installations in the two sites. Multimedia and exciting! Action Research! Also, local and body knowledge vs the institution.

“what the map cuts up, the story cuts across”
-Michel de Certeau,

/  by Nicole Marroquin

Ricardo Dominguez reenacting a 1971 speech given by Cesar Chavez as part of Mark Tribe's Port Huron Project.

Artist doing reenactments has been on my mind. And now this. So that you can relive the moment in which we could FEEL like we were living in a moment that would lead to positive change. Cesar Chavez, Angela Davis, Stokley Carmichal. I am interested in Jeremy Deller and his reenactments and making museums of regular living things. fandom. being strange and living at your parent's house for a long time. Not unrelated to Karaoke and Phil Collins project The World Won't Listen.

I think the it's idea that we can relive the event- and authenticity is not an issue- and that gut feeling attaches us to love and humanity is what we want. And it feels good and exciting. Like eating or making music or fucking or laughing or teaching. and they are all reenactments, never the first time more than once, and we love feeling the same good over and over. We pursue that. Makes sense.

/  by Nicole Marroquin

The perils of indoor artmaking have chased me out of doors again. At this time, I walk and look and research and consider where I am, who I am in this context, and how to negotiate the multiple IDs that are laid upon me.

I found out that the condo I live in was a community print shop that offered free classes to kids. And that the parking lot where I park was a collective artmaking space shared by several local artists. I met a man who has a tattoo of a geometric Aztec sun bursting from an asteroid. He tells me he walked by the mural every day on his way to school as a kid and it had an impact on him. The mural used to be on the building where I now park my car. The parking lot will inspire and empower ZERO young people, I predict.

What is gentrification? What is manifest destiny? What kind of obscuring/erasure of history and local knowledge is happening in my hood? Moving here and introducing myself around has been a series of disasters.

The Pocho Research project is one of a few projects by Sandra de la Loza and she has this down. By researching locales and working with communities facing gentrification, this becomes an intervention in the enormous SILENCE that surrounds these actions of violence against communities in the name of economic development.
One of the most interesting and complex projects I heard Sandra talk about was a plaque to commemorate a lesbian & queer bar in a Latino section of town that was taken over by yuppies moving in to the 'hood, and ultimately closed. It's not on the website.

I saw her speak at the Allied Media Conference. I want to see if she can come to Chicago and talk.

Bi/Lingual /  by Nicole Marroquin

Curated by Angelica Pozo, this exhibition will be held in Cleveland, Ohio during the month of September at the lovely Spaces Gallery. The opening is the first Friday of September, and Robin and I will have a large collaborative installation in the show. It is open through the first few weeks of October.

/  by Nicole Marroquin


Whoa. The future came way too soon. I've since made tons of new work, changed everything including my life course, location and even my hairstyle. Believe me, you me. I believe you.

Holy Vlog /  by Nicole Marroquin

Somehow this turned from a Blog into a Vlog. Now it takes more time to load and to see, so I thought I'd make an old-fashioned wordy post. An update, but less linear.

My work is making an about-face and the direction I was headed in- surveillance cameras and video- is going on hold or at least on the side for now. i need to concentrate on the objects I am interested in seeing. Yes yes, they will have built-in cameras for eyes and also might be under surveillance themselves, but it is not central. That we are living in a surveillance environment now in real life isn't central either. It is a thing we take for granted. The bodies I want to see get made will be players in this game of "security and safety" and being under surveillance themselves for being suspected criminals. Both.

Also, right now, I'd do anything to get my hands on the footage of Janet Jackson's boob flash/wardrobe malfunction from the superbowl. And I want to see how it looks next to britney's mtv music awards performance and the outrageousness of her not being skinny- the outlaw belly. the outrage a tittie and a belly caused! I want to put them in one object. boil it down a bit.

After saying all this, the dummy dummy camera project is still going on. They have been installed in public and will be installed in a gallery with tiny black and white monitors, connected by pieces of twine. the installation opens at the Work Gallery on Friday the 11th. Oh dear I have a lot to do. And some thesis thing, yah yah yah.

Un panorama desastroso... /  by Nicole Marroquin

This video is by an artist/musician named Charcko from DF. He is an activist, collective member, an organizer and justice worker which in DF is another way of saying ARTIST. He uses video, music and computers to make his work. Plus, on top of it all, he is a really cool guy. Here is a recent video he made:

Oh and feliz año nuevo, everybody.

Teams Called Pirates /  by Nicole Marroquin

Here is a good idea for a cloudy rainy 40 degree day. Specific Things is looking for submissions of images and stories. It was funded by Josh Greene's project called Service-Works in which he, as a curator, donates one month of his wages from his fine-dining waiter job to someone who has won a grant from him to do a project. And the projects are good. Varied, but the way they fit together is terrific.

So back to Specific Things, which collects images of things with themes like, Young Women Holding Koalas

The idea is interesting and reminds me of when I went to Berlin and realized there was not one photo I could take that hadn't been taken. And original ones I could take with ME in them can be broken down into categories that remind me that everything I do may seem unique, but all the urges come from the same animal..

Dulce Pinzon! /  by Nicole Marroquin


The work by Dulce Pinzon is amazing. Very interesting to me for a variety of reasons: it is participatory as well as about masking and icons, immigrants are the participants, and it is also about the economics of immigrant labor, not jargon or vague blaming. Note that one of the heros is El Santo. Also, my favorite is the delivery man named Noe. I also love the fit of the uniforms, the settings including the people in the backgrounds and the inclusion of how much $ is sent home and when. MEATY. I am a little uncomfortable about her diminunizing them- she says they are tiny- but their efforts are huge. Is that patronizing? I'll have to think on it a bit. The gigolo photo is moving.

I just started working on some shero masks so very timely, this new information.

Thanks, Redheadread for the tipoff. You have an eagle eye.