Discipline: Film/Video – experimental, Interdisciplinary Art

Denise Marika

Discipline: Film/Video – experimental, Interdisciplinary Art
Region: Brookline, MA
MacDowell Fellowships: 2001, 2003, 2015

Experimental filmmaker, multimedia artist, and activist Denise Marika (1955-2018) attended Pomona College, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1977. She then attended the University of Los Angeles where she earned an M.F.A. before moving to Brookline, MA, soon after. She was known to be a political activist, a professor, and a prolific artist. She taught art classes at the Massachusetts College of Art, School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Rhode Island School of Design. Her work, including solo exhibitions, has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, MassMoCA in North Adams, and at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Her last show, which was created in collaboration with Luanne Witowski, was exhibited posthumously at the Kingston Gallery in South Boston in September. Marika founded the Marika Foundation for Social Action, a non-profit organization that distributes grants to grassroots efforts in social justice around the world.

Studios

New Hampshire

Denise Marika worked in the New Hampshire studio.

New Hampshire Studio, originally named Peterborough Studio, was given to MacDowell by Mr. and Mrs. William Schofield, Mrs. H. A. Chamberlain, Mrs. Andrew Draper, and Miss Ruth Cheney. The studio was renamed in 1943. The Gilbert Verney Foundation established an endowed maintenance fund in 1990, and a bequest in memory of MacDowell Fellow Victor Candell underwrote the…

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