'Entertainment is often violence shrouded in a fun disguise': Marianna Simnett on being tickled for hours and having Botox injected into her throat

Croatian British multi-disciplinary artist Marianna Simnett creates films and works across performance, sculpture, drawing, and painting that use the body as a site of exploration and transformation. Her practice draws on personal and cultural history, including Balkan folklore and regional conflict, to reveal suppressed memory, unspoken anxiety, and generational trauma. She often builds tension between opposing states, blurring boundaries such as care and violence. In The Needle and the Larynx, throat injections with Botox evoke horror and revulsion while also allowing flashes of joy, humour, and surprise. Her exhibition Circus uses bright circus-like lighting and exuberant atmosphere to intensify the unsettling darkness of shadows, supported by a related book blending fiction and mood.

"She mines personal and cultural history, including the folklore of her mother's Balkan homeland and the history of conflict in that region, to expose the jagged edges of suppressed memory, unspoken anxiety and generational trauma in hypnotic, disturbing and empathetic works that span performance, sculpture, drawing and painting."

"Simnett often works by creating tension between apparently opposite states. In The Needle and the Larynx (2016), the boundary between care and violence is blurred, as viewers watch the artist's throat being injected with Botox, a procedure usually reserved for young men who want to lower their voices."

"Horror and revulsion figure heavily in her work, but there are also flashes of joy, humour, and surprise: in her new show at the Secession in Vienna the bright lights and exuberance of the circus make the darkness of the shadows all the more unsettling."

"It's spectacular, but also extremely minimal. The Secession gave me the basement, and we've gone full goth-black ceiling, floors, walls, everything is pitch black. I'm mostly known for my video installations, so I wanted to switch the narrative and present a light, sound and sculpture exhibition."

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