"Identity is fragile. So is my work, which always describes how social and cultural structures interact continuously in various ways. I feel anxiety is a sign of our times... This kind of displacement / heterotopia -being in several places at once- has had a big impact on the process and the ephemeral quality of my work, with its direct connection to life."

SMELL.BYTES TM, 1998

Jenny Marketou comes from a middle-class family, educated and politically involved, "with a tradition in the arts, [including] sculpture, music, performance, and filmmaking," but with an emphasis on home life as well. Born in 1954 in Athens and raised there, she came to the United States when she was twenty, enrolling in the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and getting her B.F.A. in 1982. Four years later, she earned a M.F.A. at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and now makes New York her home, but she continues to have strong contacts with Greece. In 1996, she represented Greece at Manifesta in Rotterdam; she also represented Greece at the 24th Sao Paulo Bienal in 1998. "Being in several places at once" describes Marketou's own peripatetic existence: "I have never really left Greece. I am very close to my family and my friends in Athens... My Greekness has brought elements into my work that I cannot always describe, but on the other hand, my American-ness has created the context, the information, the experience where this work has been created...Living between two cultures, no matter what they are, makes one feel enriched, empowered, and privileged as a human being." Marketou also travels widely and frequently, trying to experience cultures other than those she was born into and adopted later on. In a 1995 interview she described a project she was then engaged in working with Bedouins in Israel. "What I'm doing in this project is spending non-working time with the Bedouins. It's very important for me to live as much as I can in their tents with their experiences." Her 1996 installation, TRANSLocal: Camp in My Tent, grew out of this project and was installed in New York (on Staten Island and in Central Park), Mexico City, Rotterdam, Israel, and Florida. It consisted of a two-person tent furnished with sleeping bags and twin video screens-one showing the traffic, etc. outside the installation area, the other showing film that she shot among the Bedouins. Campers registered ahead of time and could spend up to three hours a day in the tent, exploring not only the Bedouins' reactions to Marketou in their midst but viewers' reactions (mostly culturally determined) to themselves and to the total experience. The "extent of my flexibility in responding to changing circumstances" Marketou observes, seems to determine "the essence of my identity."