Zoë Marden’s works over the last years include themes of the aquatic cosmos, she creates immersive installations, video and performances. Her current series of ceramic works, multi- media installations and videos take us to the underwater world of organic feminine forms.
Zoë states, “The ceramic sculptures are creature-like, some in aquariums but look as if they might make a break for it and escape their containers. The shapes are organic, curved and rounded, some echoing the folds of a vulva. Others are plan-like with branches that fold over the edges of the glass containers. The metal sculptures, with their wonky legs, give off the appearance of bending or reaching with water pooling around each of their legs slowing this potential movement down. They are the creatures of an imaginary sea, a sea that may exist on another planet. They are speculative sea squirts, they are abstracted oysters or the ‘tentacular ones’ as Donna Harraway1 would call them, they are intrinsically queer in their refusal to be defined by any categories of gender or sexuality. They refuse to be contained just as Isabelle Stengers’2 concept of Gaia, the earth as maker and destroyer, an intrusion on the exploitation by humankind and its destruction of the earth’s resources.”