Ava Marks

From the outside we are a perfect family. There are healthy children and parents who love them, but that’s just what we allow people to see. When someone says smile, we all gather into frame, put our arms around one another, and this moment of profoundly unrealistic happiness is captured. As an artist, my work focuses on the autobiographical qualities of archival images in an attempt to turn the intangible feeling of nostalgia into a physical form. My thesis, “What are you not telling me?”, shows how secrets can be obscured through photographic evidence. The work is a multimedia installation focusing on what you don’t see, what nobody will tell you and how images are a passageway into the real truths behind a “happy” family.

Ava Marks, born in 2001 in London, is a photographer and video artist focusing on archives and the autobiographical. Her work revolves around themes of self-discovery , memoir, and the hidden complexities of life (hers and others).