Marcelese Cooper’s work not only captures the odd beauty in the surrounding world but explores the intersections of his own identity, primarily focusing on the relationship between dreams, science-fiction, the black/brown body, and storytelling. Ever since he was a teenager he found himself without the words to fully capture what it is to be young, black, and queer in the U.S. at this exact moment in time; and so he looked to science-fiction and the surreal art-house cinema as the vehicle for his thoughts. What began as a dive off a cliff of uncertainty into an ocean of unreality became a visual language supported by theatrical makeup, optical illusions, experimentations with alternative means of lighting, and larger-than-life performances before the camera.
Cooper’s art practice is a circular process that crosses into various mediums but ultimately ends in my camps of photography and video. His work impacts the cannon of narrative storytelling by means of shouting his blackness, his queerness, his everything into the void of cosmic horror. The viewer is met with Cooper’s photographs and video pieces and sees not only him but his hopes, his fears, his ugliness, his triumphs, and for perhaps a moment they feel them as if they are their own contortions. He believes he must make this work because he must live. For Cooper, living is feeling and if he must feel then he will explore this human action through art or risk madness.