Marcus Young
Marcus Young 楊墨 makes art in the unexpected, to show that art can be everything and anywhere. His work expands the range of everyday human awareness and expressive behavior. He is a behavioral artist making work within mindfulness and learning communities, as well as for the stage, museums, government agencies, and the public realm. His teaching focuses on individual and collective well-being, learning through participatory artistic experiences, and awakening to an artful life through questioning basic assumptions that no longer serve our society. He is currently a Cultural Policy Fellow at Stanford University studying artists working in government.
Marcus makes art from slow walking, exuberant public dance, living in museums, meditation retreats, fortune cookies, flying kites on Earth Day, and a department of transportation conference room, to name a few. From 2006 to 2015, he was City Artist in St. Paul. His project Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk transformed the city’s sidewalk maintenance program into a publishing entity for poetry, a work that inspired dozens of other cities to do the same. From 2020 to 2022, he was Artist in Residence for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, one of two programs in the nation placing artists in statewide agencies. There, he created the Land Acknowledgment Confluence Room, re-making a top-floor conference room in the State Transportation Building into a space for broadening awareness around land, body, and place. He is the founding artist for Don’t You Feel It Too?—a participatory street dance practice of social and inner-life liberation. Born in Hong Kong, Marcus graduated from Carleton College in Music and the University of Minnesota in Theater. He is a recipient of awards from the McKnight, Bush, and Jerome Foundations, and he received the Forecast Public Art Mid-Career Grant, given to one artist a year. He is stage director for Ananya Dance Theatre. He teaches “Art + Life” at the University of Minnesota and Creative Leadership at Minneapolis College of Art & Design.
Organizing team
(from left to right): Shira Charis, Laura Levinson, Diane Hellekson, Theresa Madaus, Aki Shibata, Marcus Young
2018 Cohort
(From left to right) Alejandra Tobar Alatriz, Shira Charis, Julia Davidson, Rae Eden, Elizabeth Fontaine, Diane Hellekson, Matt Huang, Rahletta Jackson, Laura Levinson, Theresa Madaus, Demetrius McClendon, Wendy Morris, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Asher Edes, Conie Borchardt, Keila Saucedo, Khadija Siddiqui, Michael Thurston, Stayci Bell, Alys Ayumi Ogura, Heather Peebles, Mire Regulus, Aki Shibata, Xiaolu Wang, Caspian Wirth-Petrik, Kendrick Wronski, Marcus Young
2017 CoHort
(from left to right): Julia Davidson, Demetrius McClendon, Wendy Morris, Heather Peebles, Miré Regulus, Alejandra (Tobar Alatriz), Xiaolu Wang, Caspian Wirth-Petrik, Kendrick Wronski
funders
This activity is made possible by the Headwaters Foundation for Justice; and by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Photos by
Steven Cohen, Zoe Prinds-Flash, Dave Kapell, Rob Levine, Ryan Murphy, Travis Spangler, Kaamil Haider,
Jon Pocklington, Jae Shin Cross, Sarah White