Marina Grize's Bathers series explores depictions of women in and around water — rain, baths, pools, oceans — culled from sapphic films. The recurring imagery of water throughout lesbian cinematic history underscores themes of embodiment and touch, reflection and mirroring, positioning and obscuring, presence and absence, all of which constitute a queer phenomenology. Water emerges as a site of erotic and political potential, a space where transformation, self-realization, and relationality unfold. These images also carry a spiritual resonance, evoking rebirth, clarity, renewal, and destruction. Untethered from their original cinematic narratives, the series serves as an intimate tableau of sapphic existence, capturing both the beauty and the limitations of representation. Each piece begins with an appropriated still, re-photographed and printed as a dye diffusion transfer using expired film, resulting in distorted surfaces. The print is then mounted and encased in a delicate, hand-crafted mixed-metal frame. These processes bear the trace of touch — pressure, heat, peeling, the bleeding of emulsion, and the molten flow of alloy —imparting a tactile intimacy to the work.
Marina Grize (*1987, US) lives and works in Philadelphia, PA, US. In 2026, she will present a solo exhibition at Sweetwater, Berlin; her work has been included in group exhibitions at Sweetwater, Berlin; the Athenaeum, San Diego; and ICA San Diego, San Diego; among others. She received a BFA from SUNY Purchase, New York.
25.5 x 20.5 cm