b. 1966, Bombay

Maria Marshall was born in 1966 in Bombay. She received a BA from the Wimbledon College of Art in London and later studied sculpture at the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London and the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva before turning her attention to video. Many of Marshall’s video works have featured children in troubling adult situations. Often, their titles are derived from the utterances of her children. When I Grow Up I Want To Be a Cooker (1998) features footage of her son digitally altered so that it appears as though he is smoking. I should be older than all of you (2000) reveals a wide-eyed child lying in a box, surrounded by slithering snakes. When are we there? (2001) is a six-minute loop that winds through the corridors of a nondescript institutional building, ultimately ending up in a room in which Marshall herself stands; the camera approaches and focuses on her skin, which appears to move as though touched by phantom hands. For Puzzle Fit (2002–03), Marshall taped a group of preadolescent students, outfitted with microphones, in a disco; images of the students commingling and dancing appear with subtitles of their gossipy discussions on a four-part split screen, as 1970s dance music plays in the background. For 3 Minute Wonder, screened on London’s Channel 4 in 2006, Marshall created three films each consisting of three-minute deconstructed biographies of her son, her grandmother, and herself.

Marshall has had solo exhibitions at the Oliver Art Center at the California College of the Arts in Oakland (2000), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2002), and Centre pour l’Image Contemporaine in Geneva (2004), among other venues. Her work has been included in several group shows, including Family at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut (2002), Casino 2001 at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent (2001), Slow Motion at the Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Germany (2002), The American Effect at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2003), and Closed Circuit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2007). Marshall lives and works in London.