In this lecture-performance, Zoë Marden presented her current research into the figure of a mermaid that blurs boundaries between women and fish, femininity and ferocity, land and sea, human and other. A mermaid appears in stories worldwide as a creature that is neither here nor there, neither human nor fish, manifesting a gender-fluid figure for the queer imagination. In particular, Marden talked about the characters of Disney's Ariel and Ursula, as well as the Lo Ting: a mer-creature, a mermaid and the alleged ancestor of the people of Hong Kong. 

 

Zoë Marden was born and raised in Hong Kong and is now currently based in London. She is a recent graduate from the Royal College of Art’s Moving Image MA. She works with performance, video, text, sound, sculpture and installation to create alternate worlds

and speculative futures. Her work is research-based and is concerned with where intersectional feminism overlaps with the post-colonial. She has performed and exhibited at Melissa Galeria, Mimosa House, Her Stories, König Gallery London, Manifesta 11, Artlicks weekend and Vogue Fabrics among others. She is part of the CAMPerVAN collective, a nomadic queer performance platform that has been running since 2016. She ran the project space, Corretger5 in Barcelona from 2010 to 2012 and co-founded the nomadic experimental research platform: ccthenr in 2013 whilst doing an MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths.

 

The lecture-performance was a part of the closing event of the EQUINOX LIGHT CURE exhibition.