80WSE Presents

The invitational exhibition 80WSE Presents, part of the gallery’s annual series, brought together artists of varying generations and media, each selected by a team member. While not guided by a single theme, the show revealed subtle links through shared explorations of interior and exterior space. Assistant Director Michael Cohen selected Nadja Verena Marcin, who presented three works: No Country (2009), Are You Lonesome Tonight? (2009), and //KIDS// (2012).

In these works, Marcin examines the fragile boundaries between interior and exterior worlds–both physical and psychological–through performative self-staging and constructed environments. Drawing from autobiographical experience, she creates theatrical scenes that oscillate between the ordinary and the absurd, exposing the mechanisms of role-playing and the tensions between self-presentation and social expectation.

No Country is a photo series in which the artist appears alongside various men amid fabricated tropical backdrops that evoke both escapism and confinement. By mimicking gestures of seduction and leisure, she stages a subtle performance of displacement, questioning belonging, femininity, and the desire for utopia within mediated space. The work blurs distinctions between subject and setting, intimacy and performance, ultimately revealing the constructed nature of identity and desire.

In Are You Lonesome Tonight?, the artist turns to direct performance in a public space, engaging unsuspecting patrons in a local Lithuanian bar. Reimagining Elvis’s Jailhouse Rock through a gender-reversed lens, she transforms the everyday environment of casual drinkers into a charged site where gender and power dynamics are renegotiated in real time.

In //KIDS//, Marcin reinterprets Larry Clark’s Kids through a performative lens, exposing how violence, desire, and conformity shape youth culture. Using irony and exaggeration, she frames the narrative as a critique of media-driven identity and the commodification of youth.

Curated by the staff of 80WSE Gallery as part of its annual invitational, the exhibition was held at 80WSE Gallery, New York University’s public exhibition space at 80 Washington Square East, New York, NY and featured Kathe Burkhart, Jamie Bruce Dearing, Michael DeLucia, Susanna Howe, Nadja Verena Marcin, George Wilson, Adam Winner.a Marcin, Michael Betancourt, Ian Keaveny, and Niklas Washausen. It is on view at Spazju Kreattiv, Malta’s center for creativity.