Friday August 25, 7:30pm
YES: Rachelle Beaudoin / Nadja Verena Marcin
artists in person
Top: Still from “Zero Gravity” by Nadja Verena Marcin (2013) – Image courtesy of the artist
Bottom: Still from “Way To Go!” by Rachelle Beaudoin (2011) – Image courtesy of the artist
Microscope is pleased to present as part of our series YES a screening of short videos by New Hampshire-based artist Rachelle Beaudoin and German artist Nadja Verena Marcin, who is currently located in New York.
Both artists perform in their works, often in absurd and physically challenging manners, to comment on Western cultural and social issues, especially the experiences of and expectations placed on women.
In her works, Beaudoin takes a seemingly lighthearted, DIY approach to contemporary concerns, appearing alone on camera in her home or in nature as an “average” woman who is revealed to be deeply inapt for yet desperate to succeed at the task at hand, be it pole dancing in “Natural Women”, doing push-ups in “Way to Go”, or going viral in her “Webisode” series of online makeup tutorials.
Marcin places her works in a broad historical context involving elaborate sets or settings. Her latest work “How to Undress in Front of Your Husband” is a present time remake of a 1960s educational film in which Marcin replaces the original female characters as they demonstrate proper and improper ways to disrobe for their man’s eyes. And in “Zero Gravity”, the artist, dressed in stewardess uniform adorned with both German and American flag patches, floats inside the cabin of a small propeller plane reciting text from Nietzsche’s “God is dead”.
Performance videos “Cheer! Shorts” by Beaudoin and “Street” by Marcin find both artists employing props and costumes to provoke the general public on the streets and in shopping malls.
Beaudoin and Marcin will be in attendance and available for Q&A following the screening.
General Admission $8
Students & Members $6
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Rachelle Beaudoin is an artist from New Hampshire exploring and commenting on feminine iconography, pop culture, gender, and identity through her video, performance, and wearable works. Beadoin has exhibited at “Intimacy: Across Digital and Visceral Performance” at Goldsmiths in London, Itinerant Festival of International Performance Art, and the University of Lapland in Ravaniemi, Finland, among others. Beaudoin self-published “The Berlin Dictionary” in 2009 in collaboration with seventy contributors. The dictionary consists of a variety of “Berlin Words” that come from Berlin, New Hampshire and Illustrations by Beaudoin. In 2014, she was the Fullbright Artist-in-Residence at Quartier21 in Vienna, Austria and in 2015, she was a Clowes Fun Fellow at Vermont Studio Center. Beaudoin attended the College of the Holy Cross and has a Master’s degree in Digital+Media from Rhode Island School of Design.
Nadja Verena Marcin is a German artist who graduated from the Visual Art Department of New Genre, School of the Arts at Columbia University, New York in 2010, and received a Diploma of Fine Arts from the Department of New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts, Münster. Her work has been screened and she has performed in venues including among others NADA New York; MOMA, Moscow; Uncontrollable Flesh, Berkeley Art Museum; European Attitude, Zendai MOMA, China; Ludwig Museum, Germany; 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art; ICA Philadelphia; GOETHE Center, Bolivia; The Solo Project Basel. Marcin has been awarded numerous grants including Franklin Furnace Grant, NYC; Emergency Grant of Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYC; Stifung Kunstfonds, Bonn, Germany; among others. Her work has been featured in Texte zur Kinst, Artforum, Huffington Post, Interview Magazine, Artnet, among others. Marcin’s lectures include the MFA program in Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice at CUNY (City College of New York); the MFA program for Performance and Interactive media Arts, Brooklyn College, New York; and the P.I. Arts Center, New York for Video and New Media. Marcin is also the Founder and Creative Director of Kunstraum LLC, an interdisciplinary team of curators, artists and architects that promotes local and international emerging art and outstanding art concepts that in 2016 won the “Artspace Fairgoer Award” at NADA art fair in New York. She is based in New York City and North-Rhein Westphalia, Germany.
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With the underwriting support of the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation
Still from “How to Undress in Front of Your Husband” (2017) – Image courtesy of the artist
Still from “Ski Mask” (2017) – Image courtesy of the artist
