MEMORIZED
August 15th - September 26th 2025
A Two Person Exhibition with Marsha Mack and Jenny Lee
Opening Reception: Friday, August 15th 5-8 pm
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Cleo the Project Space is pleased to present Memorized, a two person show featuring the work of Marsha Mack and Jenny Lee. This exhibition is a reflection on memory, action, and motivation carried through generations, cultures and the female body.
Marsha Mack’s installations, which feature an extensive visual language through the vehicles of ceramics, glass, and found material, is an ode to the formation of identity through the lens of retrospection. The retention of trips to the Asian supermarkets that Mack frequented with her Vietnamese mother growing up in California is a central character in this work. Inspired by the decor of the shops and multitude of radiating designs on the packaging of her favorite snack foods, Mack sifts through the cultural implications of their marketing on her understanding of self. As a woman these implications are combined with coded soft signs, textures and colors to even further complicate her explorations. What is produced is an incredibly layered vision
of femininity across heritage and community and a reconciliation of complex relationships with both.
Jenny Lee’s work culls from experience with maternal influence as well. Lee’s exhibited videos and photography feature a consistent discourse with her mother as they navigate domestic space. The alignment of their bodies in layered interactions prove that rituals of understanding identity, through generational divide, can be fleeting. This longing left for realignment is apparent as the two individuals split their time between the U.S. and Korea, incurring a further nuanced influence of cultural impact on ideals of femininity passed between them. The stage sets for the reflection of that nuance, spotlighting a respect of balancing both women’s rituals and the relationship built between them amongst the chaos of the everyday.
Memorized is on view at Cleo the Project Space August 15th - September 26th
Marsha Mack holds an MFA in Ceramics and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Women’s and Gender Studies from Syracuse University, as well as a BFA in Ceramics from San Francisco State University. Working primarily in ceramics and installation, Marsha’s artistic practice blurs the line between sculpture and grocery shopping. In earnest pursuit of happiness, abstract vessels in built environments serve as carriers of multivalent identities that exist in constructed versions of paradise, adorned with a visual vocabulary of personal symbols culled from a lifelong fascination with Asian supermarkets. Her ongoing interest in cultural consumption and the formation of identity serves as a wellspring for embellished objects and installations that play to the subconscious, honoring playfulness and introspection as equals.
Marsha is the Assistant Director and Head Curator of Galleries & Exhibitions at the Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University in Portland, OR, a ceramic instructor, and a practicing visual artist. She has presented her artwork with the Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, OH); Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (Denver, CO); The Galleries of Contemporary Art (Colorado Springs, CO); and Skylab (Columbus, OH); among others. Marsha was the 2022 summer artist in residence at The Priscilla R. Tyson Cultural Arts Center, a 2023 Fall Artist in Residence at The Columbus Printed Arts Center, a 2023-24 recipient of the Greater Columbus Art Council and Columbus Museum of Art’s Visual Arts Fellowship, and a 2025 Artist in Residence with GLEAN in Portland, OR, She lives and works in Portland, OR.
marshamack.com / @yaymarshamack
Jenny Lee received her BFA in Painting from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and her MFA in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Lee’s interdisciplinary practice spans video, installation, performance, and photography to explore interpersonal dynamics, labor, comfort, and unspoken norms. Initially focusing on the relationship with her mother, Lee investigates the tension between emotional resemblance and dissonance; uncovering the unconscious rhythms and roles inscribed within the body. Lee revisits and rearranges internalized social conventions, seeking a balance between acceptance and critique. Her process includes reconstructing emotional flows by editing observational footage and presenting them through spatial installations. In doing so, Lee reexamines familiar gestures and rhythms of sensation, rendering them unfamiliar in order to reflect on identity and the dynamics of relational experience. Lee continues to reflect on identity as it emerges from the intersection of personal experience and social structure.
Lee’s major exhibitions include the solo show Light House (2024, Archive Space JUNSIJANG) and Experimental Film & Video 2025 (CICA Museum). She was selected for Comfort Station’s “Artists to Watch” list in 2023 and 2024, and participated in the Monson Arts residency program in 2023.
jennyhjlee.com / @eeejennyyy
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Photos by Cameron White