We hope you enjoy this video of Marian Bailey and Yikui (Coy) Gu describing their collaboration for ‘TEAMWERK’, currently on view at COMMONWEAL, and how they chose to explore materiality as it relates to modern technology. Bailey and Gu speak about how they formed their collaboration, and the challenges they faced to unite their practices.
Marian Bailey (they/them) is a self-taught visual artist whose work explores themes of memory, history, and identity through the use of digital and physical media. Bailey’s works are often characterized by their use of bold colors and dynamic color blocking. Central to Bailey’s artistic practice is a fascination with the ways in which individuals and communities connect to work together in order to persist into the future. As a member of the Black diaspora, Bailey often thinks about the stories, recipes, music and cultural contexts that traveled across land and water, transforming while remaining true to their essence. Drawing on personal and collective histories, their work investigates how memories and narratives are formed and transmitted across time and space.
Yikui (Coy) Gu was born in 1983 in Nantong, China and emigrated to the United States at the age of seven, growing up in Albany, NY. He has a BFA from Long Island University and a MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He has exhibited his work nationally in New York, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, and St. Louis; and internationally in London, Berlin, and Siena, Italy. He has been an artist in residence at the School of Visual Arts, and has lectured at Tyler School of Art, Alfred University, Gettysburg College, and Fontbonne University. He has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, the Washington Post, KunstForum International, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Denver Art Review, and the Yale Daily News.
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