Marlon griffith biography

Marlon Griffith is a Trinidadean Postwar & Contemporary artist who was born in 1976.
AGYU embarks on another long-term collaborative project, this time with Trinidad-born, Japan-based artist Marlon Griffith.
Born in December 1976, he grew up in Belmont, a labyrinthine neighbourhood of narrow streets and lanes on the eastern side of Port of Spain.

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MARLON GRIFFITH: SYMBOLS OF ENDURANCE

Art Gallery of York University, 2017

Distributed by Blackdog

This is the first monograph on the procession and installation practice of Trinidad-born, Japan-based artist Marlon Griffith. With essays by Emelie Chhangur, Chanzo Greenidge, Gabriel Levine and Claire Tancons, Marlon Griffith: Symbols of Endurance explores Griffith’s unique contribution to contemporary art through a detailed analysis of the artist’s formative engagement with vernacular tradition, popular and festive forms of civic celebration and performative forms of colonial resistance in the Americas.

Marlon Griffith: Symbols of Endurance follows Griffith’s artistice trajectory from his early career as a designer, or ‘Masman’, for the carnivals of Trinidad and London, and considers these origins in relation to his later large-scale public processions created and staged in situ across the globe for contemporary art audiences.

This publication is a major contribution for anyone engaged in participatory practices of collective and creative resi

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AGYU embarks on another long-term collaborative project, this time with Trinidad-born, Japan-based artist Marlon Griffith. Marlon is in Toronto from January 24 – February 7, 2014, for his first site visit in preparation for a series of residencies over the next two years to develop a new, large-scale street procession in summer 2015 and in fall 2015, a solo exhibition at AGYU.
Beginning his career as a ‘Mas’ man for Carnival, Marlon’s current work derives its form (and to an extent its process) from the performative, participatory, and ephemeral characteristics that derive from Carnival. Griffith’s work is based upon a reciprocal dialogue between ‘Mas’ (the artistic component of the Trinidad Carnival) and contemporary art as a means of investigating the phenomenological aspect of the embodied experience, while interrogating contemporary visual culture outside the traditional pitfalls of representation. Often taking the form of processions, Marlon’s performative actions are stripped down to their basic form and abstracted to create new images and narratives that respond critically a

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Born 1976 in Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago), based in Nagoya (Japan).

Started out designing Mas (masquerade) costumes for the Carnival in his hometown, and now makes costumes for parades where anyone can join in. In 2004, during a residency at Bag Factory Artists' Studios in Johannesburg, South Africa, Griffith held workshops in traditional Mas costume and mask making and staged a Trinidad-style carnival with other artists and local residents. In 2008, at SPRING, a public performance event within the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, he presented 《Runaway Reaction》, on the subject of the Gwangju massacre and Trinidad’s Canboulay riots. In addition to parade-type performances, he has also exhibited sculpture and installations. One of his best-known such works is 《Powder Box》, a photo series in which he stenciled the logos of fashion brands in baby powder onto a women’s necks and chests. Since 2004 he has been artist-in-residence in Johannesburg, Mino (Gifu Prefecture), Kingston (Jamaica), Nassau (Bahamas), and Ghent (New York, USA), and has participated in exhibitions in