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Marvin Touré is an Ivorian-American interdisciplinary artist who uses fictional narratives and the objects of innocence as a vehicle to interrogate themes of love, loss, and memory. In 2014 he received a B.A. in New Media Arts with a minor in Architecture from Southern Polytechnic State University (now Kennesaw State University) in Marietta, Georgia. In 2016 he received an M.F.A. in Fine Arts from The School of Visual Arts in New York City. Marvin has also completed residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2016), the Franconia Sculpture Park (2018), and SVA MFA Fine Arts’s Life on an Island on Governors Island, New York (2019). His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at The AC Institute in New York City (2018), and Haul gallery in Brooklyn, New York (2019 & 2021). In 2020 he was awarded both a Black Artist Fund grant and the Peter S. Reed Foundation grant for Mixed Media/Sculpture. Marvin was also awarded one of two 20th anniversary commissions for the I-Park Foundation’s 2021 Site-Responsive Art Biennale(East Haddam, CT). That same year he was named the inaugural artist-in-residence at Alma|Lewis, located in Pittsburgh, PA. Marvin has been with the University of Pittsburgh’s Architectural Studies program as a design instructor since the fall of 2022 also receiving The Heinz Endowments Creative Development Award that year. In 2023 He was selected as an artist in residence at the Mattress Factory for the development of a solo exhibition(2024), chosen as part of 1Hood Media’s Artivist Academy 2023 cohort, and an Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh two-year grant recipient.

Artwork: Peachwood Circle & Other Southern Gothics, 2021, Steel, Enamel, Acrylic, Rubber, Nylon, Asphalt, Wood, Glass, Stone, Stone Dust, Aluminum, 5ft x 80ft x 24ft. PHOTO CREDIT: DiNardi Visual Productions