My Broken Animal presents new and existing film, installation and sculpture by London-based artist Marianna Simnett (1986). At the heart of Simnett’s practice is her preoccupation with the body and its potential for transformation. Simnett’s bodies are mutants and hybrids, playing dangerous games to deadly limits. They faint, they undergo medical procedures, they die and they come back to life. Unflinching and raw, Simnett dares to uncover the parts of ourselves that usually remain concealed.
The Bird Game (film still), 2019. Courtesy the artist, FVU, the Rothschild Foundation, and the Frans Hals Museum
My Broken Animal disregards the oppositions that have been inscribed onto our perception of bodies: male versus female, sick versus healthy, animal versus human. Drawing on fairy tales, myths and through her own idiosyncratic storytelling, Simnett approaches conventions of gender, species, and our relationship to others, as not something given, but something to be found.
The Needle and the Larynx (video still), 2016. Courtesy the artist and Serpentine Galleries, London
Simnett’s first solo show in the Netherlands combines her sculpture, film and installation for the first time, expanding her imaginative universe to multiple temporalities and mediums. Simnett’s solo exhibitions include the forthcoming Kunsthalle Zürich (2019), IMA Brisbane (2020), as well as the New Museum, New York (2018), and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2018). Simnett won the Jerwood / FVU Award in 2014-15 and was shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2017. She completed an MA at the Slade School of Art in 2013.
