MARLON F. HALL

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CULTIVATOR

Marlon Hall brings significant program investment into the Community Engagement Cultivator roll. He joined the Tulsa Artist Fellowship community as a Tulsa Artist Fellow from 2021-2022. Marlon’s practice as an artist and anthropologist works to unearth beauty from perceived brokenness. Field rolls include a Fulbright Specialist by the U.S. Department of Educational and Cultural Affairs, is a 2021 Tulsa Artist Fellow, was the Visual Anthropologist and Social Media Archivist for the Greenwood Art Project, a CBS Gayle King Morning Show subject matter expert, and a producing storyteller for the Emmy Award winning Migrant Kitchen. His digital photos and film curation is featured in Google Arts and Culture with a special spotlight of his exhibition linked to the coveted Google search bar. His latest project features one of his carefully curated Amnesia Therapy Salon Dinners in partnership with The British Council and The Kenya Pavilion at the 2022 The Venice Biennial. Hall integrates community engagement into the creation of narrative driven artifacts that cultivate healing in communities that have experienced political, cultural, or systemic trauma.

Marlon F. Hall is an international lecturing anthropologist, filmmaker, and deep listener. He was recently named a Fulbright Specialist by the U.S. Department of Educational and Cultural Affairs and World Learning, is the 2019-2020 Houston Museum of African American Culture Fellow, a City of Houston Commissioned Anthropologist, and an Artist in Residence for Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. Marlon engages the choreography of visual anthropology, art-installations, and salon dinner parties to whimsically unearth community beauty from social brokenness. Moved by the history and heartbeat of the people who make up those communities, he delicately dances as a participant observer with reverence and joy. Although his work has taken him from Moscow to Nairobi, his practice has been rooted in the fruitful genius of “Third Ward, Texas” where he leads his own anthropological practice and directs the non-profit visual anthropological film company, Folklore Films. As an ethnographer, he engages the practice of deep listening to put a finger on the pulse of community pain and possibility. Moved by that pulse, he designs multi-sensory experiences that equips communities to become inner archeologists who lovingly unearth past greatness to imagine future hope. Former Sourcing Innovation Lecturing Fellow for Duke Leadership Education, Marlon has a 20 year proven track record of cross-pollinating visual-anthropology and social sculpture to grow creative learning ecologies, lead community art projects, and architect entrepreneur incubators that are all framed in his anthro-film making. His life intention is to cultivate human potential in ways that are whimsically beautiful and positively willful.