Marco G. Ferrari

Marco G. Ferrari (b. 1974) is a video artist, curator, and teacher based in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in a family of artists, immersed within the relationship between photography and sculpture he became fascinated with the interconnectedness between expression and the environment. He followed this interest at Ithaca College where he studied music and film, subsequently completing a Bachelor of Arts degree from DePaul University in Communication. In 2013 Ferrari earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Visual Arts from the University of Chicago.

A consciousness of place runs throughout Ferrari’s personal and collaborative projects. He builds films, installations, digital images, sounds, and video projection performances that explore our relationships with place and time, to probe how identity is shaped by tensions raised by our attachments to or de-attachments from our built and natural environments. He often identifies cultural landscapes that have been marked by emptiness, and treats them as agents in a social context, with a complex history. He then casts these locations as characters and records relationships between them, people, structures, and natural elements with which they engage. Intermixing documentary and fiction film techniques Ferrari’s work projects external narratives of absence and presence to elicit an internal narrative of alienation. The tension between these narratives raises questions about the structure of culture and the nature of thought and illuminate qualities of a common experience. Yet the works also yield something of the mysterious. This narrative tension, rendered through the poetic use of the camera, minimal compositions, and video projections within different spatial contexts produce an experience at once meditative and disorienting, but in the end, human. Upholding a `cinema of imperfection’ that reveals the materiality of the image, Ferrari’s work seeks to move beyond a perceived transparent reality to a place of visual plasticity and sublime emotional experience.

His films have been screened at exhibitions such as the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale; Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea–Palazzo Forti (Verona, Italy); the Athens International Film and Video Festival (Ohio); and the Chicago Cultural Center. He has performed live video projections at numerous venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art–Chicago, Ravinia Festival (Highland Park, Illinois), and the Chicago Symphony Center. Funders for projects include the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs; and the Community Film Workshop of Chicago.

For several years Ferrari performed as a singer/songwriter/guitarist for two alternative rock bands touring clubs in Chicago and the mid-west. In the late 90s Ferrari began working in the film industry in various assistant and lead roles (production coordinator, art department, camera, lighting and sound) for “in house” gallery documentaries, independent narrative films and TV ads in Chicago and Rome, Italy. In 2003 he completed Full Circle, his first feature-length documentary on the life and career of his father, sculptor Virginio Ferrari. For the next 10 years he collaborated with his father, managing his studio and archive, and curating public and private sculpture projects, lectures, group and solo exhibitions in China, Italy and the United States.

In that time he also produced a series of documentary videos on other visual, performing and fashion artists; and mixed live video projections for theatrical and musical national tours for Clinard Dance Theater, pianist Beppe Grifeo and the band Poi Dog Pondering. In 2011 he began teaching digital video, photography and visual language studio courses at Franklin University Switzerland as a Visiting Artist in Residence; and the University of Chicago through the Department of Visual Arts Teaching Fellowship.

Ferrari is a founding member of Creative Asylum, a consortium of Chicago based artists. He currently balances his art-making studio practice as a film fellow for Rebuild Foundation’s Black Cinema House, freelancing as a cinematographer for the performance artist William Pope.L, and managing Ferrari Studios, a collaborative studio space in Chicago and Guardistallo, Italy, shared between himself and his father.