Conversation with Angela Marzullo, Geneva, 2004

The conversation with Angela Marzullo centers on her experiences as an artist and mother in an art world shaped by patriarchal structures and gender biases. Marzullo shares her challenging experiences of being pregnant while attending art school in Geneva: “I thought, I can do this. I can be a role model… I felt it was almost revolutionary for me to feel that way about myself and the possibilities… at school, the reaction was more like, you can’t do that. If you want to be an artist, you have to give all of your time… I felt a lot of pressure, as if I had to choose.” Her challenges intensified with the birth of her second child, leading to feelings of isolation as her partner’s career evolved. “Sometimes I felt like I was trying to work with all the energy that the double responsibility of motherhood brings. My life, my art, it was all connected, and I felt the weight of balancing both.”

Her experiences as a mother, feminist, and cooperative community member inform her artwork, which critiques societal structures and amplifies the voices of women and mothers. She believes her work life project is inherently political: “In Geneva, we came together with other families to create a cooperative housing project… We built this house with space for all our kids, where we could live together, share meals, and support each other. It’s a community in every sense.” By collaborating on daily tasks, she is able to maintain her artistic practice. Her recent projects investigate “the hole” and “the room” as metaphors, reflecting the tension between her roles as maker and caretaker. She works with her energy and anger, inserting herself physically into her pieces.

Marzullo acknowledges the ongoing struggle for equal recognition in the art world, particularly as her interests may not align with male-dominated institutions. She explains that women still face challenges that their male counterparts don’t: “It can feel like we have to prove ourselves even more, especially when balancing family and career.” Reflecting on her feminist values, Marzullo is committed to empowering her daughters and passing on her story, her experiences, and the challenges she has faced as a woman.