Tuesday November 3, 6-10pm
Marni Kotak: Midterms Moonshot
Presented by Microscope Gallery
at Grace Exhibition Space 182 Avenue C (at 12th Street)
Microscope is pleased to present “Midterms Moonshot,” with extended hours on Tuesday November 3rd from 6pm to 10pm for Marni Kotak’s solo exhibition “America on the Dark Side of the Moon,” taking place as the midterm results roll in.
For the event, Kotak will continue her durational performance/installation, in which she responds to the daily news by drawing on dollar bills as a way to react in real-time to the election coverage, which will be live-streamed and projected in the space.
Visitors are also invited to spend time with the artist in her living room installation — which is lit by a large, oppressive moon — to discuss their thoughts about the election and share their emotional response to the unfolding political events. Mylar moon balloons with the title of the exhibition hand-drawn by Kotak will be given to the participants.
The works on view are inspired by Kotak’s experience with a mental health crisis in 2016 when she heard Richard Nixon’s voice say “We’re back! This is America on the dark side of the moon. Go write down your thoughts on a dollar bill.”
Further details about Kotak’s durational performance/installation and other works on view follow below.
Please note that the event and exhibition is being presented by Microscope Gallery at Grace Exhibition Space, 182 Avenue C (between 11th & 12 Street) in the East Village.
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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.
