Marianna Maruyama

Album with Hessel Veldman

Marble lettering

Performance and reading at Bartholomeus Gasthuis, Utrecht as part of the Klupko program "Forest Room Variations"

Solo exhibition at Page Not Found, The Hague

Solo exhibition at Page Not Found, The Hague

Solo exhibition at Page Not Found, The Hague

Solo exhibition at Page Not Found, The Hague

Video work commissioned by Kunstinstituut Melly

commissioned by Studio Rizoma, Palermo

photo by Dainius Putinas, courtesy of CAC Vilnius, 2020.

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam Performance. The Assistants deals with the special physical and emotional relationship each musician has to their instrument and to each other. In a playful way, it also problematizes the notion of “trying to help” another person. In this piece Maruyama addresses Sedje Hémon’s RSI (repetitive strain injury) prevention courses for musicians and office workers, an officially recognized treatment method in the Netherlands. Inspired by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s essay of the same name.

Video installation made in collaboration with Jan Adriaans and Gerwin Luijendijk following the residency at The Fifth Season.

The Assistants deals with the special physical and emotional relationship each musician has to their instrument and to each other. In a playful way, it also problematizes the notion of “trying to help” another person. In this piece Maruyama addresses Sedje Hémon’s RSI (repetitive strain injury) prevention courses for musicians and office workers, an officially recognized treatment method in the Netherlands. Inspired by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s essay of the same name. https://youtu.be/oC3JKy4pVdU

600 Notes is a collection of 600 performed “notes”— actual written notes, musical notes, audio notes, and other plays on the meaning of the word. Produced together with Andrius Arutiunian and performed at Galerie Nouvelles Images, The Hague and documenta 14, Kassel, July 2017. A later version was performed in 2018 at Studio Loos, The Hague. Dedicated to Sedje Hémon (1923–2011)

I connected the gesture of raking the earth with the gesture of giving a massage to a person. I commissioned a five-fingered rake to be built for the purpose. Before sunrise, I walked to a lot near my former apartment in Amsterdam to rake the ground as the sun came up.

In Deep Body Massage, I borrowed the voice of my physical therapist to speak my words, while acknowledging my own body as a speaker in itself, communicating through pressure, resistance, and transformation. Rather than opening my mouth to speak, other parts of my body — the musculature and organs — respond in various ways to the pressure he gives. Because the success of the treatment depends on the physical reciprocity between the giver and the receiver, body workers are especially attuned to the sounds of the body and their meanings: the growl of the stomach, the wide yawn, and the deep exhalation or sharp intake of air.

On the shortest day of the year, I went to a small island near Oslo with my artist collaborator Saulius Leonavicius and collected water from the shore as the darkness began to settle. I would bring this water back to Oslo for a jumping performance, symbolic of the challenges ahead. With humility and curiosity we tried to anticipate that future that was shining in the dusk on the shortest day of the year, misty and unavoidable, understanding that the only requirement that future is giving us is to be ready when it comes. There's some feeling of fatal optimism, also anxiety. How should we prepare for the future, how can we be ready? Be in the port when the boat will approach.

Installation, Museum of Yugoslav History, Belgrade I conceptually paired ‘Tito's archive’ with a distant and enormous photo recovery project happening in Japan right now. The project Omoide (Memory) Salvage aimed to recover and return family albums from the wreckage and debris after the 11 March 2011 tsunami that wiped out numerous coastal town and cities. Because of my involvement with the project in 2011 and my connection to Japan, I decided to bring the work to a new public with this particular (re)archiving project together with colleague Manami Goda (Tokyo). By exhibiting the images of the photo recovery project in Japan at the Museum of Yugoslav History in Belgrade, I intended to connect two distant, yet related political situations. 49 photographs, diagram drawn onto the wall, booklet with interviews.