Marissa Cote


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rissacote@gmail.com
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In weaving, quilting, clay and assemblage, I make material my interpretation of queer utopia. By exploring sites of labor such as construction and the loom, I sculpt the architecture of longing and belonging. Informed by the creation of inner and collective utopias, my sculptural visions of queer futurity mimic dwellings, built environments and vanishing points. My practice materially and conceptually embodies my work and visions towards queerness - as a horizon, as a site of hope, risk, and disappointment, and as glimpses of utopia.

I sculpt ceramic forms inspired by construction materials and bodily appendages, perforated and often glazed in skin and bone tones. Modeled after skeletal architecture and viscera, they pull the internal out. Weavings and quilts introduce softness and incompletion (more fragment than whole) offering snapshots rather than resolutions. Color is foundational to my work: ephemeral oranges, reds, purples and fluorescents signal both temporality and the sublime. They connect body to soul when paired with flesh tones of the ceramic and visceral gestures like pierces and cuts.

Ceramics are central to my philosophy. Fragile and unfixed, my ceramic work requires relinquishing control and embracing cracks and breakage. My sculptures are assembled as proposals: yearning, exposed, and precarious. A break can be rebuilt, and in my work, as in my philosophy of queer utopia, there is no fault in failure. Debris belongs here - it is evidence of risk, of going on.

CV