Alumni Highlight: Marie Conner

April 03, 2020

An abstract art composition featuring a white paint blob with a blue bead, a golden-yellow paint streak, and a section with brown fibrous textures on a pink and purple gradient canvas.

While at PNCA, Low-Residency MFA Alumni '19 Marie Conner’s artwork and research focused on disability theory, feminism, and how art can help us see, understand and connect with each other. That investigation continues to fuel her work. Conner is currently forming a nonprofit organization called the International Disability Aesthetics Institute, focusing on advocacy, education, access, and opportunities for disabled artists working in contemporary visual arts. As she was building a network of other disabled arts organizations across the world, she realized this type of organization does not exist anywhere. Additionally Conner maintains a studio practice creating paintings, sculpture, and performance work that has been seen at: PLACE, thirdroom, and the Ford Gallery, among other venues. She has experience curating from working with the Littman + White Galleries, the PNCA Curatorial Fellowship, and through running her own art space Tethered Cord Studios. In the upcoming Lewis and Clark College Gender Symposium Conner will be facilitating a workshop titled Lookin’ for Love: Sex and Intimacy in Fat, Broken, and Non-normative Bodies with current Low-Residency MFA candidate Kelsey Hamilton Davis.