Maren Hassinger writes of “The River” that, “The installation conforms to the limits of the space. The installation consists of debris that might be washed ashore during a flood.”
A reviewer described Hassinger’s installation at School 33 Art Center: “The first floor’s ceiling is covered with a thicket of branches and plastic bags and a great beard of dirty, knotted newspaper cascading down like a waterfall of trash, as if the viewer is some mud-dwelling croaker looking up from the bottom of a polluted river. That’s fitting, considering artist Maren Hassinger uses the metaphor of a flowing river sweeping debris downstream to illustrate how trouble travels through families. Her installation, titled simply ‘The River,’ includes a projected video of Hassinger’s interview with a long-lost uncle who unskeins their family’s tangled, incestuous genealogy: Hassinger’s troubled grandmother was the offspring of a white woman and her nephew, the son of her father’s Cherokee mistress.”
See Violet Glaze, “The River, New Work, Ex Libris: Rethinking the Library,” Baltimore City Paper (July 27, 2005).
| Artist: Maren Hassinger | Current repository: |
| Location: School 33 Art Center, Baltimore, Maryland | Source: Maren Hassinger |
| Title: The River | Rights: |
| Medium:35mm slide | Comments: “The River” is an installation made with tree branches, plastic bags, and old newspapers, with a ten-minute video projection. |
| Dimensions: | Date: June 4-30, 2005 |
African American Performance Art Archive 
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