Marina Ross (she/her) was born in 1990 in the former Soviet Union. Three years later, her family immigrated to Chicago. As a Russian Jewish immigrant, Ross draws upon her experience of acculturation, The American Dream, and the trauma that is inherently embedded within this. Traditional feminine beauty, one where a woman needs only to be polished and refined, was strongly enforced/encouraged as a form of social capital, assimilation, and protection. These notions of power and control of the feminine body and the performance of femininity saturate Ross’s work. In the summer of 2022, Ross lost her only son, Rafi, to a tragic accident, heightening her relation to loss and the fragility of the body. Her most recent work reflects this vulnerability of the desire to transcend beyond trauma.
Ross digs deep into the American obsession of the tragic heroine, focusing on cultural icons like Marilyn Monroe, Britney Murphy, Britney Spears, and Judy Garland. All of these icons function as feminine tropes--the temptress or the girl-next-door--or if they dared, both. What unites them all is also what separates them; they descend into some tragedy via death, public shaming, insanity, etc. Their downfall is the desired and feared spectacle: it is the warning and also the consequence of desiring autonomy. Yet, through their demise they all transcend into icons. Their image is not their own: they act (willingly and unwillingly) as masks for the very systems of power that exploit and work through them.
Ross’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Sugarlift (2014), Friday Studio Gallery (2015), Art Helix (2015), and Highline Stages (2017) in NYC, New York. In Chicago, Illinois her work has been exhibited at Heaven Gallery (2022), The Franklin (2022), Comfort Station (2022), Sulk (2022), and her most recent solo exhibition at Baby Blue Gallery (2022). She received The Stanley Award for International Graduate Research from The University of Iowa (2017) and attended Saint Petersburg Artist Residency, Saint Petersburg, Russia (2017). Permanent collections include: Spurlock Museum, Urbanana, Illinois, Children’s Hospital of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, and Wicklander Collection, Chicago, Illinois.
Ross digs deep into the American obsession of the tragic heroine, focusing on cultural icons like Marilyn Monroe, Britney Murphy, Britney Spears, and Judy Garland. All of these icons function as feminine tropes--the temptress or the girl-next-door--or if they dared, both. What unites them all is also what separates them; they descend into some tragedy via death, public shaming, insanity, etc. Their downfall is the desired and feared spectacle: it is the warning and also the consequence of desiring autonomy. Yet, through their demise they all transcend into icons. Their image is not their own: they act (willingly and unwillingly) as masks for the very systems of power that exploit and work through them.
Ross’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Sugarlift (2014), Friday Studio Gallery (2015), Art Helix (2015), and Highline Stages (2017) in NYC, New York. In Chicago, Illinois her work has been exhibited at Heaven Gallery (2022), The Franklin (2022), Comfort Station (2022), Sulk (2022), and her most recent solo exhibition at Baby Blue Gallery (2022). She received The Stanley Award for International Graduate Research from The University of Iowa (2017) and attended Saint Petersburg Artist Residency, Saint Petersburg, Russia (2017). Permanent collections include: Spurlock Museum, Urbanana, Illinois, Children’s Hospital of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, and Wicklander Collection, Chicago, Illinois.