Maren Henson

About the Artist

Maren Henson encodes the aural, visual, and class aspects of language with drawing, video and sound elements. She received her Master of Fine Art degree in the Mount Royal School of Multidisciplinary Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2017 where she was a finalist for the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship. She has since been a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center and a visiting artist at MICA. She has exhibited work in New York, Puerto Rico, Maryland, Texas, and California. Maren currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland and teaches at George Washington University and Anne Arundel Community College.

Artist's Statement

Labor and power are the root of communication. Exploring how these forces inform language establishes the essential context for my work. This relationship is first distilled through a series of charcoal drawings that aims at the core of written language: the arrangement of marks that forms each letter. Extracted from these drawings come stories, environments, and dialogues in video and interactive media that further my analysis the dynamics of language, power, and labor. Language is a shared tool, but is also creates perceptual class divisions. The standardization of language pits communities against one another by forming artificial divisions enforced by notions of correctness. The obfuscation of form and content present in Maren's work mirror the manipulations language undergoes when it is used to reinforce class divisions and capital’s power over labor. These manipulations are exacted with the aim of highlighting the abuse of labor by language and capital.