Marcus Young

Bio

Marcus Young 楊墨 makes art in the unexpected, to show that art can be everything and anywhere. He is a behavioral artist making work within mindfulness and learning communities, as well as for the stage, museums, government agencies, and the public realm. His work expands the range of everyday human awareness and expressive behavior. His teaching focuses on individual and collective well-being, learning through participatory artistic experiences, and awakening to an artful life through questioning basic assumptions that no longer serve our society.

Marcus makes art from slow walking, exuberant public dance, living in museums, meditation retreats, fortune cookies, flying kites on Earth Day, and a department of transportation conference room, to name a few. From 2006 to 2015, he was City Artist in St. Paul. His project Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk transformed the city’s sidewalk maintenance program into a publishing entity for poetry, a work that inspired dozens of other cities to do the same. From 2020 to 2022 he was Artist in Residence for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, one of two programs in the nation placing artists in statewide agencies. There, he created the Land Acknowledgment Confluence Room, re-making a top-floor conference room in the State Transportation Building into a space for broadening awareness around land, body, and place. He is the founding artist for Don’t You Feel It Too?—a participatory street dance practice of social and inner-life liberation. Born in Hong Kong, Young graduated from Carleton College in music and the University of Minnesota in theater. He is a recipient of awards from the McKnight, Bush, and Jerome Foundations, and he received the Forecast Public Art Mid-Career Grant, given to one artist a year. He is stage director for Ananya Dance Theatre. He teaches “Art + Life” at the University of Minnesota and Creative Leadership at Minneapolis College of Art & Design.

Academic Appointments

• Visiting Artist, Stanford Arts Office Programs