Trina Merry "That Time We Played House"

Trina Merry "That Time We Played House" 2019

Photography on Aluminum, Glossy finish
Dimensions: 20 x 30 in 
Limited Edition of 5
Signed and numbered on verso by artist, includes gallery label and certificate of authenticity

Trina Merry is an internationally recognized bodypaint and performance artist who transforms the human form into living sculpture. She holds a BFA in Film and lives and works in New York City. Working across body painting, performance, photography, and conceptual installation, Merry blurs the boundaries between figure and ground, body and infrastructure, visibility and erasure. Her ephemeral, site-specific interventions investigate identity, autonomy, surveillance, and the politics of being seen.
Merry’s life and practice were profoundly shaped when she was struck by lightning in her early twenties — an experience that dissolved her sense of separation between body and environment and revealed the energetic interconnectedness of human and system. This formative rupture continues to inform her exploration of the illusion of isolation between individual and collective, flesh and architecture, and body and technology.
She presented the solo exhibition “OBJECTIFIED” at The Untitled Space and previously collaborated with the gallery on “EDEN” at “SPRING/BREAK Art Show” (2019). Most recently, she was featured in “UPRISE 2025: The Art of Resistance” at The Untitled Space. Her work has been exhibited and performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the “2017 Biennial,” the Getty Villa, the San Jose Museum of Art (with Andy Goldsworthy), the Brooklyn Museum, the Attleboro Arts Museum, ESMoA, Museo de’ Bardini in Florence, the Edward Hopper House Museum, WORKS/San José, and SOMArts Cultural Center alongside the Guerrilla Girls.
Her camouflage works — in which bodies disappear into cityscapes, landscapes, and cultural sites — interrogate perception, power, and representation. In recent years, her practice has expanded to examine how digital platforms, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic systems scan, censor, and commodify the female body. Through hyper-detailed body painting and photographic documentation, she exposes the invisible technological infrastructures that reduce flesh to data — pixels, biometric markers, and engagement metrics — reclaiming the body as a site of resistance and agency.

Learn More about Trina Merry and her exhibitions with The Untitled Space on our website