Alumna Nadja Verena Marcin '10 Awarded NYSCA Grant

By
Logan Reed
January 10, 2021

New York State Council of the Arts recently awarded visual arts alumna Nadja Verena Marcin '10 a $25,000 grant for her first feature film, Pocahontas Returns. The project is sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, currently in pre-production.

According to NYFA, “the feature film Pocahontas Returns explores lost values inside our contemporary world and the search for ancient wisdom via the mise-en-abyme of hypermodern New York and neo-baroque Santa Cruz in Bolivia via an interracial love story blended with Telenovela and performance art."

Marcin describes Pocahontas Returns as “a character-driven feature film on our world and its tension between post-colonial patriarchy, the renaissance of minorities and indigenous culture, as well as a new female self-consciousness. This tumult sums up a beautiful time of change—worthy of homage and celebration. Central to the film is a visualization of ambiguities we live in—supported via the paradoxical title: Pocahontas Returns."

This past fall, Marcin’s work was highlighted in an exhibition at Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, which included all entrees for the Climate Change Action Award. She also had an exhibit with Art in Odd Places entitled Cover Girls.

A New York based German artist, Marcin’s work has been presented internationally at: Abrons Art Center (New York), ZKM- Museum for Art and Media (Karlsruhe), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), Zendai MOMA, Shanghai (Himalajas Museum), Museo National de Arte (La Paz), Veneto Videoart Archive (Verona), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (New York), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), Human Resources (Los Angeles), Jinsun Gallery (Seoul), Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley), ICA Philadelphia, Kunstmuseum (Bonn), 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (Moscow), Palacio Portales (Cochabamba), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Momentum | Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin), NADA (New York), Hudson Valley Contemporary Art Center (Peekskill), Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten (Marl), Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn), Aesthetica Art Prize (York), Whitney Houston Biennale (New York), among many others.