latest project
MARTY
“Who is clown? To us a clown is somebody sacred, funny, powerful, ridiculous, holy, shameful, visionary. He is all this and then some more. Fooling around, a clown is really performing a spiritual ceremony.” – John Fire Lame Deer
MARTY is an expression of frustration with the absurdity of human existence and the modern world. Martyna Madej’s alter ego, Marty the Clown, is an attempt to protect herself from the outside world but also an attempt to communicate with it. Through a series of performative acts the artist seeks to create a space of reflection in which Marty examines make-believe and illusory exaggeration as a methods for counteracting the shitty stuff of existence; finding comfort in the ridiculous.
Marty was born in pain, rooted in a deeply hidden depression and therefore serves a purpose of a therapeutic tool. Drawing its inspirations from Dadaistic methods of an artistic manifestation; the piece is reactionary and each performative act responds to issues of modern society such as capitalism, consumerism, patriarchy, body image and many more. Marty teeters between the silly and the serious, ever searching for an answer to a fundamental existential question: How to deal with the absurdity of life?