Artists

Marianna Simnett

Press release

The interdisciplinary practice of British-Croatian artist Marianna Simnett encompasses film, installation, performance, music, painting, and sculpture. Her expansive environments challenge conventional notions of femininity and physical self-determination, marked by a provocative and often unsettling engagement with body, gender, and power. Simnett's works frequently blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, science and myth, medical intervention and ritual. Her films feature unusual protagonists, from run-over animals to surgeons and children, undermining power dynamics and turning familiar stories into disquieting interpretations. These narratives unfold in a psychologically charged universe, negotiating contradictory themes such as vulnerability, violence, and care. In the Secession, Simnett presents light, sound, and sculptural works that connect to her Yugoslav heritage. Personal references, including a work inspired by her Jewish-Croatian grandfather's experiences during the Holocaust, intersect with allusions to folkloric mythological figures that can alternately appear as threats or allies, and the fustanella, a traditional Balkan skirt that stages the delicate play of revealing and concealing intimate body parts. Simnett's art engages with intense physical states, using crystallized urine as a sculptural medium or translating the ambivalent feeling of being tickled into an exploration of pleasure and pain. The surreal in her works, which draw from personal experiences and collective cultural narratives, does not serve as escapism but as a radical strategy of transformation, through which imagination and playfulness become actionable again after traumatic experiences.