Dr Marina Velez Vago

Dr Marina Velez Vago is a lecturer in Fine Art, MA Research into Practice and BA Hybrid, as well as a PhD supervisor.  As an educator, Marina has experience designing, developing, and facilitating a variety of educational programmes — at undergraduate and postgraduate level — with focus on sustainability, decolonising, and environmental issues.

My research is informed by feminist theories, other knowledges, and art practice enquiries, and explores how art can create spaces for dialogical actions and map out cartographies of experiences with which to cognise the self and the environment.

The focus of my research is value, which I approach as an indicator of human behaviour towards other humans, non-human animals, and the environment.

Guided by ethics of care, I employ photography, video and working-with strategies to map out value(s) and make visible traces of affect and kin in a multi-species nature continuum.

My doctoral research title is ‘Exploring value, meaning and worth through five art projects in rural Spain’. I received my Ph.D. from the Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University.

I am the founder and organiser of Cambridge Sustainability Residency for Artists, and the founder and curator of the Sustainability Art Prize in the creative curriculum. I have co-edited two books about art and sustainability, MILK. and ROAR.

Research

• 2021-2024 Coordinator and researcher at biannual symposia, Nordic Summer University
• 2021 Invitation to speak at Cátedra Europa conference organised by Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia.
• 2021 Invitation to present at Objets Vivants Colloque international, École des arts de la Sorbonne, Université Paris, Panthéon Sorbonne.
• 2021 Peer reviewed paper published in Innovative Practice in Higher Education Journal, GLAD-HE
• 2021 Global Conversations exhibition, ARB, University of Cambridge
• 2021 Invitation to present at Cambridge Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER)
• 2021 Presented a paper at GLAD 2021, Group for Learning Art and Design in Higher Education
• 2021 Art and Sustainability online exhibition and talk, CRASSH, University of Cambridge
• 2021 Invited to present at Art and Climate Change panel, Cambridge Zero, University of Cambridge
• 2020 Contribution published in THEOREM, a publication about doctoral research in the visual arts and design, Cambridge School of Art
• 2020 Presented at Climate Change Festival, University of Cambridge
• 2020 Presented a paper about practice-based research at ARU Discover
• 2020 Organised and curated a webinar for World Rivers’ Day, Water Museum Network, Unesco
• 2020, presenting the paper Swan Upping at Tracing the Spirit, Nordic Summer University
• 2020, presenter at Art and the Rural Imagination, Arts University of Bournemouth and MTP, UK
• 2019, presenter at Response-ability, Creativity at the Time of Environmental Crises, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
• 2019, presenter at Does the Universe Have a Margin? Symposium, Ernen, Switzerland
• 2019, presenter at Sustainability in the Creative Curriculum, UAL, UK
• 2019, presenter at Theorem Conference, Anglia Ruskin University, UK
• 2018, Camelopard: other knowledges and other values as a form of protecting non-human animals and their habitat. Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain
• 2018, Displacements Conference, Visual Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University, USA
• 2018, Social Sculpture: Re-visiting identity through an exploration of memory, perception, nomadic thinking, belonging and projected values, Nordiskt Sommaruniversitet, Riga, Latvia
• 2018, collaborative work Climate Hack at Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK
• 2017, Cosmology of the Displaced, essay on artist Kai Lossgott, South Africa
• 2017, Desert, Consciousness, Life, Cognition, paper for Echoes of the Void, Italy
• 2017, presenter at Transformative societal strategies of artistic research Symposium, Saxnas, Sweden
• 2016, presenter at Festival for the Earth, Venice, Italy
• 2016, presenter at White Wood Forum, Huntly, Scotland, UK
• 2016, presenting a paper at Sensing Practices, Goldsmith University panel, AAG, San Francisco, USA
• 2016, presenting work and a paper at Cultures & Practices of Belonging: Sustainability across Disciplines Symposium, Cambridge, UK
• 2015, collaborative work and paper at Nano^Art, Chemistry Department Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
• 2015, invited to present at Clim’art’therapy, Cambridge Festival of Ideas, Global Sustainability Institute, Cambridge, UK
• 2015, invited to present at Fine Art Research Unit, Cambridge School of Art, Cambridge, UK
• 2014, presenting a paper at Of the Earth: Art, Photography, Writing and the Environment Conference, Plymouth, UK
• 2013, presenting at Global Sustainability Institute, Sustainability and Art, Cambridge, UK
• 2012, presenting work and paper at Visualise, The Limits of Seeing event, Cambridge, UK
• 2011, presenting work at The Multilingual Family, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

Awards

• 2020 The Sustainability Art Prize for students was a selected finalist for the Green Gown Awards 2020
• 2016, shortlisted for METAL, Peterborough
• 2012 selected for Zeitgeist Open, London, UK
• 2012 Anglia Trust Foundation Scholarship for Residency Programme at La Fragua, Spain
• 2011 OUTSIDE 11, Artist as an Outsider, Cuckoo Farm, Colchester, UK
• 2011 Mapping Maternal Subjectivities Identities & Ethics (MaMSIE), Digital Media Competition
• Maternal Subjectivities, Care and Labour, Birkbeck College, UCL. UK
• 2010 Supanee Gazeley Prize, Anglia Ruskin University, BA Fine Arts

Memberships

• 2020 to date Member of Museum Detox, UK
• 2020 to date, Member of the British Art Network
• 2019 to date, Member of Swiss Artistic Research
• 2019 to date, Member and coordinator of communities of artistic practices research Circle 7 at the Nordic Summer University
• 2017-2019 associate artist of Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World
• 2010 to date Fellow at The Higher Education Academy
• 2008 to date Member of the Institute for Learning
• 2012-2014: Aid & Abet Associate Member

Residencies

• 2017, Creative Retreat, Cambridge School of Art, UK
• 2016, Festival for the Earth, Venice, Italy
• 2016, METAL, Peterborough, UK
• 2013-16, Cambridge Sustainability Residency, UK
• 2012, La Fragua, Cordoba, Spain
• 2012, And’Art, Casablanca, Morocco

See more work by Marina on her website.