President Bill Clinton, Memphis, November 13, 1993, 2000. Video projection, with sound, 20 min., continuous loop, edition 2/5, dimensions variable. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,Purchased with funds contributed by the Young Collectors Council  2002.27. © 2000 Maria Marshall. Used by permission.

Maria Marshall's deftly produced videos can provoke mixed emotions. The London-based artist uses her own children as subjects for her work, digitally manipulating their actions to create psychologically harrowing scenarios. One notable piece from 1998 shows her two-year-old son taking a drag from a cigarette, an uneasy illusion created by the combination of footage of the child playing with a toy cigarette and images of adults smoking along with other computerized effects. In President Bill Clinton, Memphis, Tennessee, November 13, 1993 (2000), we listen to one of her boys read a speech given by the former president on that date espousing the disciplined loving parental structure and its positive impact on society. His too-young voice highlights the artificiality of the words while the video shows both boys unwrapping gloriously red-wrapped Christmas packages on a continuous, speeded-up loop. In this, like Marshall's other videos, the tension between innocence and encroaching adult reality is rendered with an anxious emotional clarity.

Meghan Dailey