Overview
Marie-Louise Bennett is a multi-disciplinary visual artist based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Born in South Africa in 1981, she immigrated to the United States at the age of 14. She earned her Bachelor of Architecture from Virginia Tech in 2004 and spent the better part of a decade pursuing sustainable practices in the design of schools, residences, and research laboratories.
In 2012 she became a mother. This seismic life change prompted her to re-evaluate her personal and professional ambitions. She returned to her true passion - visual art. Since then, her paintings and installations have been included in multiple juried exhibitions, including the 2020 North Carolina Artists Exhibition at CAM Raleigh. Her interactive public installation, The Empathy Project - Who(m) Do You See?, has appeared in several locations in Raleigh, including the North Carolina Legislative Building and Raleigh Union Station plaza.
Marie-Louise approaches her practice with questions about how we see ourselves and others. She is interested in the embodied record of experience, the construction of identities, the conundrum of “passing”, immigration, parenthood, childhood, and memory. She explores the intersections of self and other, vulnerability and resilience, transience and permanence, and the physical and the intangible. Her work is a call for the recognition of our shared humanity and interdependence, and an invitation to engage in continual and fearless self-reflection.