photo : permission de l'artiste | courtesy of the artist
A pig stands on his hind legs atop a grotesquery of flora and fauna and cuts pork chops from his stomach. A man lies under a tree while a bikini-clad woman inflates his erection with a bicycle pump. An ominous pyramid of skulls appears. A woman lifts her dress to urinate on a nest of eggs. In the distance, a great fire burns through the city.
These are a few of the scenarios, surreal and fantastical, playful and irreverent, that populate the work of Marina Roy. They are found on the sides of books, hidden behind the veneer of her paintings, and animated in her videos. Roy’s cast of unruly characters resists the politesse of artspeak or academia. They appear throughout her work, unsettling predictable narratives in favour of haptic connections informed by the unconscious, the extraordinary, and the quotidian.
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