Bio
Marlena Urban (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist based on Long Island who works in traditional media like drawing, painting, mixed media, printmaking, and sculpture. Marlena is an MFA graduate from CUNY Brooklyn College (2024) and teaches at Suffolk County Community College in the Visual Arts department.
Marlena loves teaching art and connecting with creative people to build communities in the art world. She is interested in landscapes, ambiguity, and playfulness in her work. Marlena has worked closely under distinguished professor Howardena Pindell at Stony Brook University (2021) and with Derrick Adams at Brooklyn College (2024). Her most recent exhibitions include the SVA Summer Artist Residency (2024) and various group exhibitions at Brooklyn Art Haus and Monsta House.
Artist Statement
Themes in my work include love, self-discovery, and inner strength. I seek inspiration from my direct experiences and twist them into nuanced abstractions in conceptual and visual ways. Themes in my work include playfulness, imagination, and power. I use figuration and abstraction as tools to interplay with revealing vulnerability about myself. Specificity and broad concepts are interwoven into an ambiguous object that defies reality. In my newest work, I aim to use traditional mediums in non-traditional ways to separate my work from the classical ways traditional mediums have been used for centuries. By doing this, I am creating a safe space for my work to exist with childlike wonder.