Through Nancy Marks’ art and poetry, Material Witness confronts the chilling parallels between her mother’s hiding in France in the 1940s and the realities faced by immigrants today. The echoes between the 1940s and our contemporary world are undeniable and demand witness. This mixed-media installation, which premiered in Boston in 2025, features twenty-five drypoint prints and original poems. The images invite viewers to see them through a dual lens: ‘then’ and ‘now.’ What befell Jews, Roma, leftists, and so many others targeted in that era resonates starkly with the experiences of immigrants navigating hostile systems and rhetoric today. Material Witness presents interwoven histories, holding the pain of the past alongside the urgencies of the present.
Nancy Marks is a Boston-based artist and social justice advocate who uses her practice to address critical societal issues. She is the co-founder of The Opioid Project: Changing Perceptions Through Art and Storytelling, an initiative dedicated to raising awareness and combating the stigma surrounding the opioid crisis. In 2024, her work was recognized with a First-Place award from the National Organization for Arts in Health (NOAH) for Arts Advancing Social Justice.
Marks’s current traveling exhibition, Material Witness, weaves together her mother’s experience as a Holocaust survivor with the contemporary struggles of immigrants. The project is also featured in the anthology America’s Slide Towards Authoritarianism (IHRAM Press).
Beyond her advocacy work, Marks explores the “aesthetic and social paradoxes” of the city through her Urban Abstraction series—an interest in the power of place rooted in her New York upbringing. Her Dialogue/Interpretation series further explores her connection to nature and the abstract emotional world, reflecting an enduring respect for the human spirit’s capacity for profound healing.
