Marianna Simnett
born in 1986 in Kingston-upon-Thames, United Kingdom; lives in Berlin, Germany
Dance, Stanley, Dance, Stanley, Dance, 2020
wallpaper, recurring pattern, digitally edited, from watercolors as original source
Commission evn collection 2020
First shown at Wallpaper #4, 2020 in Maria Enzersdorf, Austria
Inv. No. WP_16
Marianna Simnett works in many disciplines: video art, performances, installations, sculptures, drawings. She often uses motifs of animals in her works and invents fable-like stories for these easily decipherable figures. Bodies are understood and used in Marianna Simnett’s works as possibilities for transformation.
In the spring of 2020, as the world began to become aware of the pandemic, she was inspired to create Dance, Stanley, Dance by a squirrel found on the side of the road during a walk in London. For the exhibition “Unforgotten Time” (5.6. – 30.8.2020) at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Stanley was revived as a watercolor, digitally animated and accompanied by a flute tune. In Maria Enzersdorf, Stanley dances in large format across two walls of the EVN headquater. The dynamics of his movements are clearly comprehensible. If for the exhibition in Bregenz Stanley was shown as a single figure, here we see him colorfully multiplied in the wallpaper. In multiplication, a wounded being has become part of a community.