Fire Season by Marius Keo Marjolin

Location: Back of facade next to 45 Weybosset Street

Marius Keo Marjolin created “Fire Season” at 35 Weybosset St (lot side) as part of TAC’s Weybosset Residency.

Their design is inspired by Khmer art forms such as dance, theater, and shadow puppetry. The mural features a female dancer holding an ax and wearing the traditional costume of a male character in Khmer dance. She is bookended by Southeast Asian muntjac deer and tree motifs. The limited warm color palette alludes to both the screen of Cambodian shadow puppet theater, traditionally lit by bonfire, and to the orange skies caused by the wildfires of today. Bridging influences from mythology and ecology, Fire Season is a meditation on how we might emotionally reconcile with our world's rapidly warming climate.

Through this mural, Marius hopes to represent Providence’s sizable Cambodian community, who have been established in Rhode Island since the 1970s, as well as to connect the city of Providence with global conversations about diaspora and climate change.

Marius is a queer Khmer-American artist based in Providence, RI. They grew up making art and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2021 with a BFA in Printmaking. They are a Teaching Artist at CityArts and a member of Binch Press + Queer.Archive.Work, a cooperatively run printshop and zine library. Through their vibrant watercolor paintings and screen prints, Marius overlaps colors and textures with characters and symbols from Khmer dance. They are especially inspired by water as a powerful symbol of movement within Cambodian folklore and history.

Thank you to Paolino Properties for supporting the residency and renovations to the facade, and to Adler’s Design Center & Hardware for supply support. We’re also grateful for support provided in part by a grant from RISCA through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders.

Medium: C2 Paint

Artist IG: @tofu.twink

Partners and Sponsors: Paolino Properties, Adlers Design and Hardware, RISCA

~TAKE A CLOSER LOOK~

What do you think of the color palette chosen by the artist and its significance?

How does the artist work with color and lines across the panels?

Look at your surroundings. What do you make of this kind of a place for art?