October 11 - December 4, 2022

Marnie Blair is an artist, patient, and educator. Blair’s work is informed by her experience of surviving cardiac arrest and having Long Q T Syndrome, a condition that affects the heart’s electrical system. She relies on an implanted cardioverter defibrillator to regulate heart rhythms and prevent SCA.

Through her artwork, Blair explores the intersections between fragility and resilience; the biological and the artificial; private and public; decay and resuscitation; and the body and architecture. She is particularly interested in how one’s sense of embodiment and identity become profoundly affected by illness, diagnosis, and recovery. By fusing traditional print media with new technologies, her work examines the human body as seen through the lens of medicine and science.

“My prints and painted woodcuts interrogate what it means to be dependent upon a mechanical device for survival, to inhabit a cyborg-like existence as part human/part machine. These questions are not only personally relevant but can also be applied to the current transformation of human existence due to our increasing reliance upon many different types of technologies.
My own experience represents the specific and direct physical relationship that exists between ICD and the electrical activity of the heart. I employ computer-operated carving machines to carve woodcuts, which are then hand printed or painted. This reliance on technology references our own increasing dependence on technology and its impact on our daily life. This way of working also addresses the ways that identity can be enhanced or infringed upon by technologies, architectural structures, and institutions.”