Sunday November 15, 3pm
Artist Talk: Marni Kotak
In conversation with Natasha Kurchanova
Presented by Microscope Gallery
at Grace Exhibition Space, 182 Avenue C (btwn 11th & 12th)
Microscope is very pleased to present an artist talk with Marni Kotak in conversation with art historian, critic, curator and psychoanalyst Natasha Kurchanova. The event is taking place in connection with the artist’s solo exhibition “Marni Kotak: America on the Dark Side of the Moon.”
The title of the exhibition refers to a mental health crisis Kotak experienced during the lead up to the 2016 election in which she heard Nixon’s voice say “We’re Back! This is America on the dark side of the moon. Go write down your thoughts about it on a dollar bill.”
Kotak and Kurchanova will discuss Kotak’s highly personal durational performance installation, video, sculptures, paintings and drawings on view. In addition to themes of mental health and connections between Nixon’s and the current administration — including their manned moon missions — Kotak’s works address themes of economic inequity, political corruption, and authoritarianism. As in all her works, the role of art and community as a means of support and to affect change is emphasized.
The event and exhibition are taking place offsite at Grace Exhibition Space, 182 Avenue C (between 11 & 12 Streets in the East Village).
Further information about the exhibition ‘Marni Kotak: America on the Dark Side of the Moon” follows below.
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Natasha Kurchanova is an art historian, critic, curator and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. As an art historian, she specialized in the Russian avant-garde and published numerous articles for catalogues, anthologies on Russian art, and such publications as October, RES: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics, and Ligeia. She reviewed books for Art Journal, Kritika, Burlington Art Magazine, and Slavic Review and contributed exhibition reviews and interviews with artists to Studio International, Bomb Magazine, and other art publications. She assisted in curating exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum and at the Museum of Modern Art. In 2010, she curated an exhibition “Who’s Afraid of Ornament?” at Nurture Art gallery in Brooklyn. Natasha Kurchanova is an Advanced Candidate in the Institute of Psychoanalytic Study and Research. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the City University of New York.
Marni Kotak (b. 1974) is a multimedia and performance artist presenting everyday life being lived. She has received international attention for her durational performances and exhibitions, most notably “The Birth of Baby X” (2011) in which she gave birth to her son as a live performance and the subsequent related shows in 2011, 2017, and 2022; “Mad Meds” (2014) during which the artist slowly withdrew from psychiatric medications prescribed for postpartum depression; and in “Dancing in the Oval Office” (2019) for which she danced each day within a recreation of the White House Oval Office. Kotak’s works have also appeared at the Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile; Artists Space, New York, NY; Exit Art, New York, NY; White Box, New York, NY Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY; English Kills Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, NY; among others. She has performed extensively in the US and abroad. Her exhibitions have been featured in Artforum, Art Pulse, The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Times, Studio International, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Time Magazine, Washington Post, among many others. Kotak’s work also appear in books and publications including Exhibition as Interior, Interior as Exhibition: Space of Display within and beyond the Museum and Gallery, Bloomsbury Publishing (2025); The Maternal, Digital Subjectivity, and the Aesthetics of Interruption,” Bloomsbury (2022); Maternal Performance: Feminist Relations, Palgrave McMillian (2021); The Art of Feminisim: Images that shaped the Fight for Equality, 1957-2017, Chronicle Books (2018); and Blackwells Companions to Contemporary Art: A Companion to Feminist Art, John Wiley & Sons (2019), among others. Kotak has appeared on Good Morning America (ABC), CBC Radio, NPR, ZDFKultur, and other broadcasts as well as in the documentary “The Art of Making it,” (2021) which appears on Amazon Prime. Marni Kotak received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Brooklyn College.
