The Artists Roundtable is an international forum for leading practitioners, hosted by Tamsin Dillon of SVA’s MA Curatorial Practice faculty.
Marianna Simnett is a British-Croatian multidisciplinary artist. Her work spans film, video, sculpture, painting, installation, performance, and sound. She explores vulnerability, autonomy, control, pain, care, transformation, and the human body, often through surreal and psychologically charged narratives. Drawing on horror, fairy tales, mythology, medical imagery, and relationships between humans and other species, Simnett creates unsettling fictional worlds populated by altered bodies, animals, children, and hybrid characters. Her art has been presented internationally at institutions including Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Kunsthalle Zürich, MMK Frankfurt, and the New Museum in New York, and she participated in the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.
Simnett will introduce the multidisciplinary and experimental approach to her practice and will talk about her major large-scale installations at the Venice Biennale, the Hamburger Bahnhof, and the New Museum. She’ll discuss some of the key themes that preoccupy her, such as the body, transformation, mythology, technology, fluidity, thresholds, borders, collapse, violence, and humor. She’ll also talk about her understanding of different styles of curation—whether they have an open approach or a more prescriptive one.