October 1 - 30, 2021
Can you see yourself from the outside looking in? Are you able to spot your darkness and address it? Can you face what you've become?
Bloodfight is the story of the start of my new life seven years ago. The first moments of the darkest time of my life would eventually lead me to my ultimate healing—the beginning.
Love almost killed me. And, fighting back became my only option. This photographic series is about that time. Bloodfight is a visual, photographic memoir about a love story, but not the good kind.
It's the kind of fight that ends in "to kill or be killed."
It's the kind of story that will open you up to the edge of darkness where broken hearts go to die. It depicts and details the brutality of emotional abuse and redemption. Every scene from this collection of work is symbolic of terrifying places in which I've existed, inside my mind.
I never meant for this to be a cohesive project. I was at a crossroads in my life, having just left a mentally and emotionally abusive relationship. I just wanted to have fun making something spooky and strange. It wasn't until halfway through the series that I realized I was photographing myself and my experiences through dark metaphors.
It was then that I knew that I should continue.
In looking at myself and my experiences from the outside, I realized that it was the first step in my healing journey.
I photographed the collection of these images with an improv style, with no preparation of any kind. I gave no directions nor instructions to the actors and models beforehand. The only exception was that it was to look like a scary movie.
I directed them from my psyche and what I felt was right at the moment, and they delivered my visions beautifully. I could never have done it without them.
I only hope that while you look through these images, that you can face the pain you might have felt and or ever caused.
- Marlene Fox
Visit the Exhibit
House of Shadows Creative Gallery & Market
2101 W Kennedy Blvd, Tampa, FL 33606
For more information: (813) 773-4111
Exhibit Hours
Tuesday - Friday: Noon - 5pm
Saturday: 10am to 3pm
About Marlene Fox
Marlene has been an artist in the Tampa Bay area for close to ten years. The focus of her work has always been to examine the human experience from a woman's perspective. She often uses her own life experiences to draw inspiration and uses photographic expression as an outlet for her own kind of art therapy. She puts herself in her work in a most sincere way while being honest and transparent with the viewer through her imagery. Often employing traditionally taboo imagery, her desire to provoke a shock factor has lead her work into wildly strange and interesting spaces. She asks the viewer to step outside of their comfort zone and examine what these images represent in a culture of both liberation and desecration to the female experience.
Artist Statement
I grew up in rural Ohio and was raised by mostly traditional and conservative family and friends. Very early in my childhood, I had doubts about the world surrounding me and what the female role in that world should and should not be. I was the black sheep and "the weird one". of my. family As I entered adulthood, I began to create imagery that I felt challenged what seemed to me to be outdated and depressing gender stereotypes.
My work has evolved over time from shockingly sexual and bloody to snakes and composite photography. I also use inversed biblical themes as I was raised in a Christian environment . It's how I relate to my viewer. In my work the snake does not represent deceit, it represents freedom, sexuality, liberation, and knowledge.
