Jenine Marsh: Microcosm
01.24.25 – 03.29.25
Opening Reception: Friday, January 24th, 7-10PM
Jenine Marsh: Microcosm is an exhibition of new sculptural works by the Toronto-based artist.
In Microcosm, Jenine Marsh constructs a precarious island where history, value, and utopian longing converge. The exhibition takes its title from an 1808 artist’s manual, Microcosm, which was designed for house-bound bourgeois women to help them imagine and depict the daily lives and labor of the working class. From the protective utopia of the country estate or city mansion, these hobby artists drew and painted images of another utopia: a quasi-real world of fresh air, open spaces, and a purposeful life of work. The image has all the contradictions of imagined utopias: their impossible distance and immanent closeness; an inclusionary heaven constructed from an exclusionary hell; the illusions that drive self-delusion of separation, and vice versa.
Marsh’s Microcosm invites viewers to navigate a world where ideals of paradise and progress fracture under the weight of history. By blending symbols of labor, currency, and utopia, the installation challenges us to consider how value is constructed and who is excluded in the pursuit of perfection. In this drifting, precarious space, Marsh suggests that even in fragmentation, there is the possibility of reimagining what we hold dear—and perhaps, of building something more collective and enduring.
About the Artist
Jenine Marsh (b. 1984, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) is an artist who uses sculpture and installation to explore themes of agency, mortality and value. Coins as well as other paraphernalia of exchange and contact, such as casts of hands, purses and flowers, are manipulated through serialized processes of destruction and transformation to cultivate illicit and intimate responses to the shared conditions of end-stage capitalism.
Marsh received her BFA from the Alberta University of the Arts and her MFA from the University of Guelph. Marsh’s work has been exhibited in Canadian galleries such as Cooper Cole, Franz Kaka, Nuit Blache, Toronto; Vie d’ange, Centre Clark, Joe Project, Montreal; Griffin Art Projects, and Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver. She has also exhibited in international museums and galleries including Ashley Berlin, Berlin; Prairie Gallery, Chicago; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Essex Flowers, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Gianni Manhattan, Vienna, OSL Contemporary, Oslo; Entrée Gallery, and Lulu, Mexico City. She has served as artist in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, at AiR Bergen at USF Verftet, Bergen; La Datcha, Berlin; SOMA, Mexico City; Rupert, Vilnius; and Vermont Studio Center, Johnson. She also had a public site-specific installation in the 2023 Nuit Blanche (Toronto) which was curated by Kari Cwynar. Marsh lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
This exhibition is the second in BICA’s series I WANT TO BELIEVE, a trilogy of exhibitions and related programs addressing crises of faith—locally, globally, and within the art world. The series offers three distinct artistic perspectives on faith, optimism, and the power of belief, tailored for a city of true believers.
This series generously supported by:
