Ep. 89 Caitlin Mary Margarett

Miss Art World

Caitlin Mary Margarett is a Midwestern artist, born and raised between Minnesota and Iowa. CMM attends the University of Wisconsin-Madison, seeking an MFA in 4D (2024). She holds a BFA in performance art and a BA in art history from the University of Northern Iowa (2018). Rooted in a durational, performative practice, CMM's work shifts between seeking an esthetic, spiritual ambience and an immediate, frenetic urgency about our climate crisis. Her work is a multimedia exploration of place and the near past; utilizing video, photography, ceramics, antiques, and textiles to evoke both nostalgia and solastalgia. She has most recently been analyzing her local ecology and considering the Midwest landscape as an article of history in and of itself. The 100 Days project is a durational performance practice that began in 2020, illustrating the timeline of the Midwest’s loss in biodiversity alongside her maternal family's immigration from Denmark to Iowa. The project is focused on generating a discussion surrounding our concept of time, ecological and cultural erosion, and grief. In 2021, her 100 Days V.ii documented the Iowa Derecho's damage and showed her multi-day pilgrimage across the state. In the final days of V.ii, CMM documented the homes, graves, and churches of her maternal line, and the Rompot prairie that was destroyed by Cargill and the City of Cedar Rapids. Through 100 Days V.i in 2020, CMM cataloged much of her surrounding landscape and domestic rituals at the onset of the pandemic. CMM's art practice is a means to make sense of her own feminist spirituality within systems of cultural / ecological flourishing and suffering. Her work poses questions about individual agency, and the experience of being locked in cycles of redemption and reemergence. These recurring threads, woven into narratives around site specificity and our connection to place, coalesce into new work that asks what our roles are as we brace for the impact of our climate emergency. Her work has been shown throughout the Midwest, at 2021's Miami Art Week as a part of the PERFORMANCE IS ALIVE / Satellite Show that runs concurrent with Art Basel Miami; at Louisiana State University for the 2019 Queeramics Symposium; in Ceramics Monthly; Emergency Index V. 8 and V. 9; and Aesthetica Magazine. She is currently preparing for her research trip to Denmark in 2022 and her solo show in Berlin, Germany, at LiTEHAUS GALERIE & PROJEKTRAUM, also slated for 2022. CMM's next upcoming solo show is scheduled at ARTIFACT Gallery, New York, NY, on January 11-29, 2023. https://www.caitlinmarymargarett.com/