Opiate of the Masses Print

Gina-Marie Cincinnati is an American artist currently based in the UK. Born in West Islip, New York in 1981, she grew up in Bel Air, Maryland before settling in Baltimore, Maryland for college at Maryland Institute College of Art in 1999. She moved to Germany in 2009 to live and work until 2013. She landed in Tokyo, Japan in 2014, where she pursued an active arts career alongside her work as an educator. There, she separated from all that had been holding her back artistically. The work started with reclaiming derogatory language used against people identifying as female in typographic paintings, then progressed to collage and mixed media using her own and found photographs, acrylic paint, and Japanese papers. She relocated to the UK with her cats and husband in September, 2023. After a successful showing at the XIV Florence Biennale, she found herself in a new country, on new medications, moving towards more extensive mixed-media pieces that continue to focus on the passage of and our experience of time, self-actualization, womxn’s issues, modern capitalist and consumerist culture, crisis or disaster fatigue, and the attention span of modern humans. Her work considers our experience of the passage of time. The functions and growth beyond our control tend to proceed unnoticed. As an artist trained in photography, she often contemplates what it means to capture a moment that will never exist again and will pass by too quickly to be adequately experienced, enjoyed, and cataloged. As a mixed media artist, she takes this concept further to question what it means to actively remain present for these passing moments. What are the possibilities? How can the moments be documented and truly experienced? How many will be fully remembered in the fleeting seconds that amount to a lifetime? What of them remains tangible or visible once they (and we) have passed? Most of her pieces are, in some way, different interpretations or experiences of time. Many are ongoing projects that will continue to age and evolve for years. Each of them questions, in various ways, the value of things, or a life, a body, and time spent. Does their lack of function or lost purpose diminish their existence or value? The viewer must decide for themselves.