2023 Artist Member showcase 

Marion Faymonville: Black River 

Second Floor Gallery 

August 19 - October 8, 2023

Black River contemplates the experience of insecurity in the wake of wildfires, a pandemic and racial tensions. Marion Faymonville uses documentary and staged photography to eliminate the divide between the real and the imaginary. Her practice is rooted in the beautiful and terrifying natural world and informed by cultural identities within her multiracial immigrant family. Black River speaks to a universal perspective created by the evocative rather than the specific. In embracing the windows and outside views brought into the gallery, connections between images and the outside world emerge and invoke personal narratives based on each viewer’s experience of the installation.

While isolating in their remote house during the pandemic Faymonville began photographing her daughter, her boredom, and her resilience. A blond wig, that she coveted when little, became the inspiration for an ambiguous drama created with found objects around the house. On hot days she twisted her hair, and at night they slept in one bed escaping the outside world. Evening walks to the river generated both solace and fear in a silent landscape. 

The theme of the exhibition revolves not only around felt ecological changes but the history of photography and its complicity in white supremacy and the creation of myth; and the implications of raising a biracial child in a country that has never collectively faced its racist past. 

Faymonville’s exhibition is a memory of her time together with her daughter and her experimentations with photography during a time of change and instability. 

Black River explores how an Arcadian dreamscape is harnessed by the reality of a larger world and how a violent history can impose a narrative on the landscape and the body.

About the artist:

Marion Faymonville is an artist based in San Francisco and Sonoma County, CA. She uses documentary and staged photography and is interested in eliminating the divide between the real and the imaginary. Her practice is rooted in the beautiful and terrifying natural world and informed by cultural identities within her multiracial immigrant family. 

Image Credit:

1. Marion Faymonville, Lichen, Archival pigment print, 2020. 18 x 24 in. Courtesy the artist.

2. Faymonville, Wig, Archival pigment print, 2021. 18 x 24 in. Courtesy the artist.

3. Faymonville, Back, Archival pigment print, 2020. 12 x 16 in. Courtesy the artist.

4. Faymonville, Human, Archival pigment print, 2021. 9 x 12 in. Courtesy the artist.

5. Faymonville, Insect, Archival pigment print, 2021. 18 x 24 in. Courtesy the artist.