marcus zilliox | artist project

Marcus Zilliox was born in Phoenix of Native American and Mexican American descent. He grew up in the Gila River Pima Community in Arizona and in Phoenix, Arizona. Zilliox earned a BFA in Painting and Drawing at Arizona State University in 1996. Zilliox earned a MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale in 2007. He has exhibited his work throughout the United States. In 2002, he received a Community Scholar fellowship at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. Solo exhibitions include the Hispanic Research Center at Arizona State University, the David Rockefeller Center for Latino Studies at Harvard, and Museo Chicano in Phoenix.  Zilliox exhibited in Another Arizona at the Nelson Fine Arts Museum, Arizona Biennial ‘01 at Tucson Museum of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He lives and works in Connecticut and New York City.

Notes from the artist:

My work explores ghosts, memory, ancestry, trace, and residue, using text, images, and abstraction.  My mediums are smoke, rust, plastic, paint, and photography. Smoke is fleeting yet carbon black is one of the most lightfast and longest lasting of pigments. As a medium it contains both the fleeting moment and the taste of immortality, a timeliness and timelessness, corporeal and incorporeal, living in the moment, but lasting longer than a lifetime. It is Carpe Diem and Memento Mori, embedded in each stroke is Seize The Day because You Will Die.