Self-portrait
artist statement
I explore the intersections of materiality, body ephemerality, and Earth stewardship via painting, sculpture, photo, video and performance. As a gestural abstract painter and sculptor, I work with natural pigments and wild clay that I forage ethically. I often place my canvases to be photographed or filmed in conversation with the Earth’s landscapes, and like with the process for ceramics, create many of my paintings utilizing the four elements as co-collaborators.
During an intensive 3-year treatment for Lyme Disease in 2021, I began positioning my ill body and my used (sterilized) IV bags – often together while wearing a cloak I made of the IV bags sewn together – in nature to highlight the connection between plastic use, global warming, and the rise of health epidemics and co-infections like Lyme.
Recent video performances filmed in nature speak to chronic fatigue, death, and molecular rejuvenation, as well as somatically repairing one’s connection with the Earth after climate betrayal. All of my work touches on conceptual thresholds like surrender, transformation, alchemy, the psyche, courage, and collective healing.
artist biography
Marta Lola Staudinger (b.1987) is an Austrian-American artist living and working between Washington DC, Italy and Spain. She holds an MA in Contemporary Art and Curatorial Studies from the Universidad de Ramon Lull (Barcelona, Spain) and a triple undergraduate degree in Art History, Sociology and Communications from George Mason University (Fairfax, VA). Throughout her academic and museum career, Marta curated exhibitions and apprenticed with fine artists.
Staudinger is an interdisciplinary artist who explores intersections of materiality, body ephemerality, and Earth stewardship. Recent group exhibitions include On the Color of Distance at Gradient Project Space in West Virginia (2024), Degrees of Commitment: Climate, Ecosystems, and Society at Arrowmont in Tennessee (2023) and at various art galleries in the Washington DC area; including the Joan Hisaoka Gallery and American Poetry Museum, with her latest solo exhibition Currency? Material, Radiator. A Retrospective at HOMME (2021). Marta’s work has been featured in the Washington Post, Washingtonian, DC Modern Luxury, and Home&Design. She is a recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship (2024 & 2025).