Marilyn Arsem

Marilyn Arsem has created more than 200 live events since 1975, ranging from solo performances to large-scale, site-specific works incorporating installation and performance. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Arsem has presented work in 30 countries at festivals, alternative spaces, galleries, museums, universities and conferences, as well as online.

Many of her works are durational in nature, minimal in actions and materials, and have been created in response to specific sites, engaging with its history, use, or politics. Sites have included a former Cold War missile base in the United States, a 15th century Turkish bath in North Macedonia, an aluminum factory in Argentina, the grounds of an abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium in Poland, the site of the Spanish landing in the Philippines, and a deserted Russian mining outpost in the Arctic Circle.

Arsem was the 2015 recipient of the Maud Morgan Prize at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she presented 100 Ways to Consider Time, 100 different 6-hour performances on the nature of time, over 103 days from November 9, 2015 to February 19, 2016.

Arsem established one of the most extensive programs internationally in visually-based performance art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), where she taught for 27 years. Since leaving SMFA in 2014, she has expanded her teaching of performance workshops internationally.

A book on her work, Responding to Site: the performance work of Marilyn Arsem, edited by Jennie Klein and Natalie Loveless, has recently been published by Intellect Books of the UK. It can be purchased online or through your local bookstore.. 

Website: marilynarsem.net