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Marisa J. Futernick

@marisafuternick

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Los Angeles artist, writer, amateur detective
2026 City of LA DCA Cultural Trailblazer
@a4d_artistsfordemocracy

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So honored to be recognized as a DCA 2026 Cultural Trailblazer alongside such impressive artists.

Repost @culture_la: This week, we are concluding our series of features on each of the eleven recipients of DCA’s 2026 Cultural Trailblazer Award with Marisa J. Futernick. Futernick is an artist and writer who uses photography, text, video, installation, painting, artist’s books, and radio to examine the less visible social and political histories of the United States.

Her recent solo exhibitions include presentations at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles; Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky; the University of Kentucky (two-person); Brandeis University, Boston; and Glendale Community College. Her work has been exhibited at numerous other institutions, including the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; The British Library, London; Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Harvard University; and Yale University. She has published many artist’s books and is a core member of the activist group Artists 4 Democracy.

Futernick holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the Royal Academy Schools, London, with additional studies at Goldsmiths College, London. Born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, Futernick spent more than 15 years living and working in London before making Los Angeles her home.

Futernick’s new artist’s book “Some Men” will be published to coincide with America’s 250th birthday on July 4th, 2026. Featuring collages that subversively question ideas of patriotism, race, and masculinity, the book considers the notion of American exceptionalism at a time of profound democratic crisis.

marisafuternick.com

DCA’s annual Cultural Trailblazer grant promotes artists who are recognized as regional innovators. These peer-selected artists have been chosen for their contribution to the community and caliber of their work.

1. Still from I Never Learned to Play Mah Jongg, 2025. Single-channel HD video with sound, 24:19
2: Hillary, From the series Concession, 2020/2022, Archival pigment print,
12 x 18 in
3. Artist portrait by @marisafuternick

Thank you to the wonderful Andrea Gyorody for this thoughtful review for @artforum. Honored to have the exhibition featured as a Critics’ Pick and to read such a tender consideration of the work.

Repost @gyorodyody: If you’re in the mood for a dose of the most perfect summer nostalgia…

Get yourself to @marisafuternick’s show at the Skirball! I loved spending time with Marisa’s poignant ode to the Catskills, especially her beautiful video of family photos intercut with her poetic documentation of the same sites many years later. On view until August 31!

@skirball_la #thecatskills by @marisafuternick

Much gratitude to @reneereizman for this insightful review for @hyperallergic and for taking such a keen interest in the exhibition.

Repost @hyperallergic: From the 1920s to ’60s, the Catskill Mountains, with its woody resorts and bungalows, were a playground for middle-class Jewish families traveling Upstate from New York City. By the 1970s, the glory days of the “Borscht Belt” — a derogatory nickname derived from the Russian soup that many Ashkenazi Jews favored — had faded. The Borscht Belt would be reduced to postcards and Polaroids.

Artist Marisa J. Futernick (@marisafuternick) uses these mementos as fodder for fantasy in her solo exhibition “Away in the Catskills: Summers, Sour Cream, and Dirty Dancing” at the Skirball Cultural Center in LA, reconstructing her grandmother’s vacations through family photographs, a video essay, and an installation. Having never been to the Catskills as a child, she uses the images and souvenirs as writing prompts, crafting fictional dialogue that playfully depicts Jewish-American leisure.

To read the full review by @reneereizman, visit the link in bio.
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1 - Installation view of Marisa J. Futernick, “Do the Swim” (left) and “Do the Hitch Hike” (right) from the series Dirty Dancing (2017), archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper (all images Renée Reizman/Hyperallergic)

3 - Film still of Marisa J. Futernick, “I Never Learned to Play Mah Jongg” (2025) (film score composed with Paul Huckerby)

#MarisaJFuternick #BorschtBelt #Catskills #MidCentury #LosAngeles #Skirball @skirball_la by @marisafuternick

It’s been 10 years since my artist’s book 13 Presidents was published. My book tour concluded on Election Night in 2016, at the @icalondon. It was a long night. And it has been a long decade in the American presidency.

I was especially honored when Chris Kraus wrote to me about the book, calling it “completely awesome…. A great portrait of America over the 20th century.”

13 Presidents is still in print, and more relevant than ever.

Published by @slimvolume
Distributed by @artdata_london
Softback, 304 pages, 8.3 x 5.8 in
With 13 short stories and 274 color and black-and-white photographs
Designed by @frasermuggeridgestudio
Edited by @cfitewassilak

In 2014, Marisa J. Futernick drove nearly ten thousand miles across America, visiting all thirteen of the nation’s presidential libraries along the way. 13 Presidents is the result: an artist’s book that combines photographs from the journey with a suite of short stories. Mixing fact and fiction, each president from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush is a protagonist in this collection of unexpected portraits.

The photographs, shot on analog film, depict the everyday details of the towns that these men are from, including the homes where they were born, and their final resting places. 13 Presidents weaves together personal narrative with wider cultural observation, forming a vision of America that is both invented and true. by @marisafuternick

Have you been following the Nixonmaxxing trend? The past is always the present…

As the cold beer ran down the inside of my shirt collar, I thought about how much I’d missed Orange County. For the first time in history, the Angels had won their division, and I finally felt like I was back home.

Nixon Comes Home, 2012
Silkscreen on paper
19.7 x 28.6 in by @marisafuternick

Our @a4d_artistsfordemocracy voter guide is now out! Head to the link in my bio or DM me for our recommendations for the upcoming general election.

We’ve also made 11 different issue-based zines to help get out the vote. The zines are free to copy and distribute—download and print them directly from the A4D website! We are also mailing zines to bookstores, galleries, and campuses in key swing districts—let us know if you want us to send you some!

VOTE EARLY, folks. In person is best, or drop off your ballot in person at a vote center, or use an official drop box (don’t rely on USPS). If you live somewhere with ballot tracking, sign up and track your ballot. by @marisafuternick

Flat, 2026

The small flag is from a U.S. naturalization ceremony—new citizens are given these to wave. It is one of two American flags in my possession, the other being a huge one that was flown over the U.S. Capitol in 1998. by @marisafuternick

Another still from True North, a new video work-in-progress about Oliver North and the “Iran-Contra affair”, so much of which laid the groundwork for our current moment—in more ways than I realized before I went down this rabbit hole.

We should pay more attention to the past because it is almost always the present. by @marisafuternick

Nancy in the shadows. The past is always the present.

From True North — a work-in-progress about Oliver North, Iran-Contra, and American patriotism, among other things. by @marisafuternick

Ontario, Canada. Details from my work-in-progress The Pull of Niagara. Straddling the Canadian/American border, Niagara Falls flows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. It is a complex place, ever more so as it becomes a renewed line of geopolitical tension. by @marisafuternick

This little painting was eaten by a bear. Or maybe just defecated on by a bear.

I gifted it to a friend some years ago, and it was hanging in the kitchen of her house in Lake Tahoe. While she was out of town, a bear made himself at home in her place, and this little painting was trashed along with everything else.

Saltine hors d’oeuvre, 2014
Acrylic on birch ply
6 x 6 inches by @marisafuternick

I am deeply honored to share that the @Skirball_LA has acquired a number of works from my recent solo exhibition, Away in the Catskills, for the museum’s permanent collection.

My video I Never Learned to Play Mah Jongg, created specially for the exhibition, as well as two prints from my Dirty Dancing series—Do the Watusi, and Do the Twist—are now part of the institution’s collection.

It is so meaningful to continue to be a part of the Skirball community, and I am grateful to the entire team, including Vice President and Museum Director Sheri Bernstein, Museum Deputy Director Michele Urton, and Chief Curator Cate Thurston for facilitating the addition of my work to the collection, and for their ongoing support.

With its mission to serve as “a place of meeting guided by the Jewish tradition of welcoming the stranger and inspired by the American democratic ideals of freedom and equality,” the Skirball is a fitting home for these works here in Los Angeles. The Skirball Museum holds some 25,000 pieces, from the ancient to the contemporary, which together reflect Jewish life in many different eras and parts of the world.

Installation view and stills from I Never Learned to Play Mah Jongg, 2025
Single-channel HD video with sound, 24:19
Installation photography: Robert Wedemeyer
Do the Watusi and Do the Twist, from the series Dirty Dancing, 2017. Archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle paper. 36 x 24 in each
Installation photography: Sarah Golonka

#skirball #awayinthecatskills #marisajfuternick by @marisafuternick