Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism and keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today. This article is part of Hyperallergic ’s 2024 Pride Month series , featuring interviews with art-world queer and trans elders throughout June.
Artist Marlene McCarty, arguably best known for her larger-than-life graphite and pen drawings of teenage girls who murdered their parents, has in recent years concerned herself with plants. Finding affinities between the erasure of botanic knowledge and the ongoing, urgent attacks on women’s bodily autonomy, McCarty’s earthworks, portraits of flora, and indoor gardens have much to do with her earlier explorations: In “AGAIN,” (2023), a public artwork in Silo City in Buffalo, New York, for instance, she grew a plot of poisonous plants whose simultaneous healing and toxic properties root us in ideas of survival, rebellion, and the coexistence of species. In October, she’ll be bringing a different facet of her project Into the Weeds to the Tabakalera art center in Spain, working with plants native to the area.
And next year, closer to home at the Alice Austen House in Staten Island, McCarty and collaborator Donald Moffet t will present previously unseen photos from their 1990s series in which they dress up as female-presenting pilgrims. In our interview be.