When a close friend asked artist Jeanhee Yu to help him set up his studio in Marfa, she was more than excited at the proposition. Yu, with a background in the New York fashion industry from a college student up until the COVID-19 pandemic, knew the move to small-town Texas was one she was up for.
“A good friend of mine wanted me to come and help him with his studio,” Yu said. “I was like, ‘I’ve always wanted to come,’ which turned out to be a three or four month project, and now I’m here.”
Yu became smitten with Marfa right away, finding a charm in the connection of a small community filled with creative people.
“There’s just something about the quality of culture here,” Yu said. “It’s the caliber of New York and you can find this small village charm.”
As Yu settled in Marfa she found not only discovering the contemporary art scene of Judd and the Chinati Foundation important, but also the local one as well. Noticing that there wasn’t just one source to go by in terms of finding more information about local artists and where to find their work, Marfa MUST was born in 2024. With the help of Dim Zayan, there is a fully accessible website where an interactive digital map and directory can be found, along with many artists and their work.
“I just thought –– because I thought I was only going to be here for a few months –– I really wanted to see what’s going on locally,” Yu said, “and organize an open studio amongst people we knew through people we knew. It started off four of us, then it went to three, then it went to two. Now it’s just Dim and me; in every season we have help as well.”
Since its genesis in 2024, Marfa MUST has been a success with its goal always rooted in human connection and to have artists that want to be discovered, discoverable. This year there is an emphasis on a scheduled open studio to concentrate the traffic flow, attention and the focus of each artist.
“So by having a featured artist within a specific time block, we help to focus navigation for the visitors and for the artists,” Yu said. “What we found was a lot of artists get to visit each other.”
Among the many talented artists visitors can find through the help of Marfa MUST, the organization is hosting its first international featured guest artist — Belgian multidisciplinary artist and musician Reinout Zeeger, aka Xavier Van Eeckhoutte. As part of Group Exhibition V3, Zeeger will present Marfa Lights — 25 Unexpected Visitors. The exhibition features 25 photographic works that are deeply personal to the artist.
“I’m trying to understand what lies behind things, behind the material world we see and experience,” Zeeger said.
“I don’t restrict myself to a single discipline. I use photography, text, music, sound and installation, depending on what an idea requires,” he said. “For me, art can be a carrier of mystery, a glimpse of another reality behind the visible world.”
After the unexpected loss of his daughter, Zeeger and his wife, Leen, traveled to Marfa a year later, where he discovered what would be the soul of his exhibition — his wife’s boots.
“One night, around midnight, I was walking through Marfa taking photographs,” he recalled. “I suddenly had the idea of placing her boots beneath a streetlight in the center of town, with the lights of Hotel Paisano in the background. That is how the photograph Marfa Lights came into existence.”
“For me, that is the meaning of unexpected,” he said. “The photograph is not simply about the famous phenomenon of the Marfa Lights. For me, it is about the mystery of life, loss, hope and beginning again. It is about light confronting darkness and, ultimately, the triumph of life over death. A pair of boots were bought for a journey that never happened. A year later, they made it to Marfa anyway. They became a photograph. That photograph became an exhibition. The exhibition became intertwined with music. And now something much larger is growing out of it.
For me, ultimately, this is a story about resilience.”
What started as an idea of connecting artists and people together with Marfa MUST has now become a solid partner with the Chinati Foundation in its third season. More information about the talented artists and programming can be found at marfamust.org.
Correction
An October 8 print article on the Marfa Untitled Studio Tour (MUST) misidentified a participant in a photo caption. The photo is of an unknown Dutch musician and not Reinout Zeeger, aka Xavier Van Eeckhoutte.
