Marissa Delano

Third Born presents Depraved Family!!!!! by American artist Marissa Delano.

Depraved Family!!!!! excavates the domestic sphere, revealing it as a site of both intimacy and corruption. Through assemblages of found mirrors, photographs, and ephemeral materials from her personal archive, Delano constructs a fractured reflection of desire, secrecy, and the dysfunctions embedded in familial structures.

Through her exploration of “availabism”—a method of working with readily accessible materials—Delano embraces both scarcity and improvisation, foregrounding the resourcefulness necessary for survival in a system that seeks to regulate female sexuality. Her references span literary and theoretical texts. From Samuel Delany’s assertion that pornography holds keen transformative power, to Nayland Blake’s observation that our pornographic proclivities reveal profound truths about the self.

Central to Delano’s exhibition is the use of mirrors—objects that implicate the viewer in their own act of looking. In the main gallery stands a 27 ft. installation with engraved glass mirrors found in Mexico by the artist. Her reflective composition situates the audience within the work, collapsing the boundary between observer and participant. The effect is both confrontational and intimate, forcing a reckoning with the latent voyeurism that structures our engagement with the sexualized body. This act is driven within the exhibition by asking visitors to become participants, as they uncover works hidden under sheer golden tulle, engaging with incest porn titles:

"No soy una puta! Es follada por su padre! x

Pervy Daddy

XXDAUGHTER.COM

These texts underscore themes of sexual transgression and the performativity of gender, exposing the ways in which societal norms shape and distort identity.

Delano constructs environments within the smaller gallery spaces where the “home” becomes an uncanny stage. Playing with ideas surrounding concealment and exposure, she gestures toward the material traces of childhood and femininity through the repurposing of household objects—vanity tables, sticker dispensers, gilded assemblages. Sound and smell further deepen the psychological tension: male voices recite explicit pornographic titles, questioning who controls the narratives of desire and degradation, while infused scents of deadstock men’s cologne, Fuel for Life by Diesel, fill the space. This invisible presence of audio and scent stimulate the feeling of being inconspicuously watched in one's own home.

Pseudo-peepholes punctuate the installation, blurring distinctions between absence and access, secrecy and revelation. Thus, Depraved Family!!!!! rejects explicit answers,instead offering a sensory landscape where the sweetness of family life collides with the terror of recognition. By layering notions of the day-to-day with the grotesque, Delano challenges the viewer to confront the constructed nature of desire, the power of taboo, and the instability of personal history.

The exhibition will also be accompanied by an artist-designed zine, available at the gallery and online. The zine serves as both an extension of the exhibition and an intimate document of its conceptual framework including short stories and texts that contextualize Delano’s practice.

The opening reception of Depraved Family!!!!! will be activated through a performance by artist Camila Arévalo (B. 1993 San Antonio, Colombia) drawing audiences beyond passive observation into direct engagement with the psychological and material tensions of the exhibition.

–Third Born