MARLENE McCARTY
B. 1957
Marlene McCarty has worked across various media since the 1980s. She was a member of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury and was the co-founder of the trans-disciplinary design studio Bureau along with Donald Moffett. Using everyday materials such as graphite, ballpoint pen, and highlighter, McCarty probes issues ranging from sexual and social formation to parricide and infanticide. Her subjects are often depicted engaging in unorthodox or transgressive social formations, breaking down the traditional, accepted interactions among humans and other species, as well as between humans and nature.
Marlene McCarty (born 1957, Lexington, KY) studied at the University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Architecture and Art (1975-77) and Schule für Gestaltung, Basel, Switzerland (1978-83). A solo exhibition of drawings, entitled Marlene McCarty: Thicker than Water, was presented at the UK Art Museum, Lexington, KY, in 2022-23. Her site-specific installation AGAIN, which developed from the 2019 earthwork project Into the Weeds, is on view at the Lyceum at Silo City, Buffalo, NY. A major survey exhibition of her work, Hard-Keepers, was presented at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin in 2013. Her work is included in the collections of major institutions, such as The Brooklyn Museum, NY; Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. McCarty lives and works in New York.
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