Artist Statement

My practice centers on creating theatrical, situational experiences that make the body’s invisible worlds visible. Working across performance, sculpture, sound, and video, I build encounters where defenses can lower and vulnerability becomes generative.

I am drawn to the body as a site of knowledge, its invisible systems, its defenses, its capacity for connection. My work physically manifests what is ordinarily hidden: psychological armor held as tension and rigidity, the microbial ecosystems that majority-rule our decisions, the grief that moves through a stranger’s hand pressed against glass.

Handmade props and theatrical costumes become tools for creating bonds with participants, facilitating sensorial engagement that reveals the micro processes within us that shape our macro reality. Camp aesthetics are central to this approach, not as ironic distance but as a way to hold sincerity and spectacle together, making the unbearable approachable. The fantastical and the sincere coexist, creating heightened encounters where healing feels possible precisely because we are not in a clinical space.

My work is rooted in phenomenology and somatic philosophy, Merleau-Ponty’s insistence that there is no separation between mind and body, subject and object, interior and exterior. I am drawn to artists like Lygia Clark, who reimagined art-making as lived experience rather than object production. In this spirit, participation is not incidental to my work,  it is the work itself.

Bio

A native of Miami, Marilyn received her BFA in 2014 from The FIU Honors College, majoring in Video Art and Art History.

In addition to her art practice, she is also a professional arts documentary filmmaker with direction, camera and editing credits on films shot internationally for The Harpo Foundation, ICA Miami, Locust Projects, The Margulies Collection and The Miami Design District. 

Marilyn has performed at Edge Zones Gallery, Touché Boutique (Tunnel Projects), The Nerve: Performance Art Festival, Locust Projects, The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, FilmGate: Interactive Media Festival, Miami Beach Urban Studios: Digital Oculus, and Edge Zones: Miami Performance International Festival. Her sculptural / video work was shown at Zilberman Gallery, Satellite Art Fair, III Points, Place Project Group’s pop-up at The Miami Design District and at The Sagamore Art Week 2020 exhibitions. 

Contact me: marilynloddi@gmail.com