Photo by Payton Ruddock
Marlon F. Hall is a sculptor, filmmaker, and public artist whose work is rooted in social practice and grown from anthropological listening. His life intention is to cultivate human potential while unearthing beauty from perceived community brokenness. He follows the lineage of Anthropologist and Artist Zora Neale Hurston by actively doing life with and deeply listening to communities he longs to create art with and for. As an art-making storyteller, he was recently named a Fulbright Specialist by the U.S. Department of Educational and Cultural Affairs, is a 2021 Tulsa Artist Fellow, was the Visual Anthropologist and Social Media Archivist for the Greenwood Art Project, a CBS Gayle King Morning Show subject matter expert, and a producing storyteller for the Emmy Award winning Migrant Kitchen. His digital photos and film curation is featured in Google Arts and Culture with a special spotlight of his exhibition linked to the coveted Google search bar. His latest project features one of his carefully curated Amnesia Therapy Salon Dinners in partnership with The British Council and The Kenya Pavilion at the 2022 The Venice Biennial.
Marlon activates socially engaged art-installations, large scaled photography, ethnographic films shaped as visual poems, and carefully designed salon dinners as human rights of passage as a community well and wheel of healing. He works to move communities from deeply refreshing places of hope and joy.
Today his work is rooted in Tulsa where he is tilling the soil with local creatives and community advocates to nourish the harvest of human possibility growing from the ashes of the 1921 Race Massacre. He believes Tulsa is not a graveyard but a garden. Gardens have decomposed elements of life in them as well but they move towards the destined growth cycle of life, death, and renewal. The growth he works to reveal in Tulsa harvests the resilient fruit of the human spirit that is the fire-proof and impenetrable legacy of Black Wall Street.
THE ECOTONE TABLE (ARCHIVAL PHOTOS)
Sculpture/Table
Materials: Native Wood, Locally Sourced Archival Door
Dimensions: 12 ft x 4 ft (with an ancient door at the center)
This table, integrating reclaimed doors, fosters dialogue among culturally diverse groups. With a background in facilitating meaningful interactions across diverse communities, Marlon bridges cultural and social divides through art and communal experiences. His ongoing project, "From a Door at the Center of a Table," builds on over 200 curated dinners worldwide, blending art with anthropology to create transformative spaces.
He was most recently invited to become the University of Wisconsin Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence (click the link) featuring his practice of making physical tables to make meals for a culturally and cognitively diverse group of people. Notably, Marlon has collaborated with The British Council at the 2022 Venice Biennial's Kenya Pavilion, using salon dinners to foster dialogue amidst complex social, political, and environmental issues. AMNESIA SALON DINNER #30
News Articles:
Marlon works to magnify the images of those who are systemically minimized. People like Black children in America. His fieldwork in Tulsa for “Dear Black Future” was an exhibition of large scaled photography, documentary film and community engagement that honors the past of the black community by imagining its future.
Baldwin’s Portal, Marlon F. Hall 2023 BALDWIN’S PORTAL (ARCHIVAL PHOTOS) Found Object Sculpture
Materials: Triangular Mirrors, Reclaimed Ancient Door, Pyramid Structure Floor Suspension
MOON STRIKE, Marlon F. Hall 2021
Double exposed archival photo taken during the field research for #agardennotagraveyard healing installation that featured the stories of Kode Ransom, Rodney Tisdal, Sassion, and Millionaire.
Hall, Marlon BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (ARCHIVAL PHOTOS) Sculpture/Table
Materials: Native Wood, Locally Sourced Archival Doors
Dimensions: 12 ft x 4 ft (in four 6 ft diagonal sections)