Marci Washington

Gallery Affiliations: Rena Bransten Gallery

Region: Pacific Coast

Website: http://www.marciwashington.com

City / State: Berkeley, CA

I am interested in depicting a decadent society in the midst of crisis; to tell a story set in a time that is both past and present. A carefully constructed collapse of historical time capable of revealing what is common between our society now and societies of the past, as well as what is unique to our particular historical moment.

I am building this story as if I am illustrating a novel that doesn’t exist. If it did, it would probably be a lot like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, or Bleak House, novels which use the popular conventions of fiction in order to seduce you into a story which ultimately functions as social commentary. I would like to highjack the ideological function of fiction, appropriating the character types and narrative conventions in order to construct an allegorical tale; a story capable of challenging the simplistic cultural narrative of our own time in order to reveal a much darker tale of moral decline, spiritual crisis, and rampant anxiety.