Thesis 2025 / Sophia G. Marcus

I am an interdisciplinary artist, working in primarily second-hand and personally sourced mixed media installations about girlhood, the rural, the synthetic, and the objects just out of view.

My undergraduate training in ecology causes me to consistently think in cycles: wondering who impacts what, where it happens, and why. In an attempt to see the full picture of interaction, I find myself gravitating towards telling the stories of things on the periphery. Most of my time in this program has been focused on showing the holiness of lost spaces – eg., the space between your garage and your neighbor’s – and the creatures that inhabit them.

Many of my works are rooted in the stories of an outdoor and semi-rural upbringing: marking how much remains of summer break by the stage of crop growth, and witnessing the bizarre interactions of wild creatures and domesticated farm animals. While my work is somewhat autobiographical, I believe that the content it addresses – sensations of forgottenness, persistence, and belonging – can be widely applicable to a variety of audiences.

"Girlhood-ish" is a distinct departure from the work I created in my first year at MCAD. This installation tells the story of my youth, but the core themes remain the same: mourning, relationships. My residence in girlhood is one of ghoulishness. I haunt it as a specter, looking on through the veil. This haunting is embodied through three life-sized flannel dolls, each modeled after my own body. These figures occupy intimate, domestic vignettes—one sits before a trifold mirror on a bureau, another lies swathed in bed coverings, and the third slumps over an art desk. The installation is steeped in the theatrics of gender, occupying the stage of a 1960s-built church building, completed with scraped and stained hardwood floors, and faded velvet curtains full of dust.

These artifacts of periphery, experience or object, are ugly, untouchable, and beautiful in their own right. There is glory at the edge of our view, there is holiness in the back of your kitchen cupboards.

Website: https://www.sophiagmarcus.com/

Instagram: @soph.kmz