BIOGRAPHY
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Dana-Marie Bullock is a Jamaican-born interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her work encompasses painting, sculpture, installation and performance art. Bullock's work draws from self-portraiture and familial memory in tandem with abstraction to engage with themes of sexuality, bodily autonomy, trauma, and loss.
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Bullock is currently completing her MFA in Painting and Drawing at Pratt Institute. She is the recipient of the Virginia Pratt Thayer Scholarship 2024, the Schuback Endowed Scholarship 2024, and Pratt Institute’s Ox-Bow Residency Award 2024. Bullock completed her summer residency at Ox-Bow School of Art under the tutelage of Michelle Grabner, Molly Zuckerman, and Brad Killam. Bullock also completed a residency masterclass with artist, Mickalene Thomas and curator, Jasmine Wahi at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in 2024.
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Following her undergraduate studies in Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Bullock studied Fine Arts with a specialization in painting at The Art Students League of New York. She has received multiple awards at various shows in New York City including Red Dot Winner (best in show) and the Norma Adler Scholarship at the Art Students League, along with media coverage in both the United States and Jamaica. In 2019, Bullock exhibited at the National Gallery of Jamaica and one of her works is currently exhibited at the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment, and Sport in Jamaica.
My practice investigates the body as a site of cultural identification and material history sewn into the flesh. Working primarily in painting, sculpture, and installation, my work draws from self-portraiture and familial memory in tandem with abstraction to engage with themes of sexuality, bodily autonomy, trauma, and loss.
Using materials with symbolic histories such as chiffon, gauze, lace, hair weft, metal, and found objects—all of which carry historical resonance quietly embedded in Jamaican culture, domestic life, and architecture—I emphasize the female body as an architectural form. In that form, I see a site of strength, comfort, and bravery but also fragility and impermanence.
Breaking away from the traditional painting conventions of a tightly stretched canvas, I examine the medium and abstraction as a genre, capable of blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture. My work is typically hung unstretched, given a body, damaged, resurrected, and repaired using varied methods of needlework to stitch together layers of interwoven histories of Western, Eastern, African, and Black cultures within Jamaica.
Ultimately, my work creates a visual language that captures sensations and realities that defy vocalization—further shedding light on objectification, racial and gender discrimination, historical erasure, and medical injustice—issues linked to political concepts like feminism, race, and class.​