Marina Wainer is a French-Argentinian artist based in Paris
She develops a transdisciplinary practice at the nexus of art, technology, and society. After studying dance, video art and new media, she started making interactive art. The projects are imagined as sensitive experiences and places the audience at the heart of the work. Wainer explores contemporary issues and new spaces of representation, investigating the involvement of technology in social, political and aesthetic issues. She collaborates closely with researchers and scientists, also with artists from other disciplines.
The interaction proposed in her work, which encourages participation, has sometimes turned into collaboration, involving the public from the very first stages [including working with various communities]. Her work has been presented as part of solo and group exhibitions in museums, art centers, galleries and festivals in France, Argentina, Iceland, England, Colombia, Finland, Belgium and Taiwan.
With the surge of smartphones and social networks, Wainer started producing a photographic work featured on Instagram. A project that focuses on new forms of staging reality and proposes to cross and resonate different narratives and territories. Part of this production has been integrated into installations and developed in studios with students and workshops for the general public [including Liking the city, Fictiopolis, Earth Anthology among others].
A decade ago, after a strong urban anchor, she started a work in natural landscapes, which questions our anthropocentric relationship with the natural world under different angles. This has given raise to on-site research residencies and collaborative projects at the crossroads of the arts, sciences and policy making, as a recent work developed in the framework of Resonances IV NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract [JRC SciArt Project, Directorate-General for Environment of the European Commission, VOICE].
This moment also marked a turning point in her approach to the creative process, articulating her work with process-based residencies, that allowed her to deepen reflection and experimentation in making work.
Her background of technology in the physical space led her to collaborate with architect Valérie de La Chapelle within La Fracture Numérique collective, then with the studio InterActStructure, to set up scenography, spatial and interaction design and interventions in the urban space with augmented reality. These projects were commissioned by cultural institutions and companies including EDF, Adobe, Observeur du Design, Media Library of Seine et Marne, Letters and Manuscripts Museum [Paris, France], Fine Arts Museum [Salta, Argentina], among others.
Alongside her artistic production, she has been teaching and designing events in different academic and cultural contexts. For the Monde Festival [organized by Le Monde at the Opera Bastille], she designed a series of workshops for the general public, from 2015 to 2017. Since 2014, she has regularly collaborated with the Grand Palais and the Grand Palais Immersif for its cultural programme, with the production of performances, the design of workshops and the organization of events. Between 2012 and 2016, she launched and organized the soirées *di*/zaïn, a series of events devoted to creation, bringing together creators and researchers. From 2017 to 2023, she has been head of programming and artistic director of Forum Design, a touring biennial that explores questions about our ways of inhabiting the world through the intersecting perspectives of artists, designers, architects, researchers and scientists.
On the pedagogical side, after teaching digital cultures and mentoring projects in art, design and architecture schools, she has been the co-director of the post-graduate specialized Master’s degree in Creation and Contemporary Technology at ENSCI-Les Ateliers. She runs workshops in different art/design schools [currently ENSCI-Les Ateliers and Ecole Estienne] and organisations working with the general public.
Wainer has been invited to give lectures, talks and participate in round tables on themes related to her work at various institutions: Grand Palais,
Gaîté Lyrique, University of Brighton, Iceland University of the Arts [Reykjavik], Centro Recoleta [Buenos Aires], Universidad de Antioquia [Medellin],
Ecole Supérieure d’Art et Design d’Orléans, Maison de l’Architecture, Institut Français, University of Nottingham, King’s College London.