Marina Fini: Out of this World

Artist Marina Fini is so out of this world that she doesn’t seem human. She
has iridescent blue eyes, color-shifting mermaid hair and a butterfly tattooed
beneath each collarbone. When aliens land on earth, I hope they look like
Marina. Although she has a magic touch with the appropriately futuristic
medium of plexiglass, her work knows no boundaries, and stretches beyond
the fields of film, fashion, jewelry and fine art. Marina invites me over to
her place in Altadena to smoke from her hookah. Every corner of her place
is a cyber-mystic dream, filled with past and future projects, Mylar, and
plastic sculptures. Even the floor is covered with opalescent tiles. “Right
after I moved in, I shot Clitopia here (a music video-slash-ode to the clitoris
produced by Refinery29),” explains Marina, “and it just stayed like this.”
Before she finished her degree at UC Santa Cruz in digital arts and new
media, Marina was studying environmentalism. “It’s such a dichotomy to be
attracted to plastic because I care about the environment so much.” Although
it seems to come from another galaxy, her handmade, plexiglass jewelry is a
hit here on earth, with clients like Baddie Winkle and Miley Cyrus. She recalls
the time she went to a Grammy after party to meet Miley for the first time.
“I gave her some mushrooms,” says Marina. Wait–the hallucinatory kind?
“No, mushroom earrings!” she laughs, “but I did used to sell that kind too.” If
there’s one thing this futuristic flower child wants me to take away from my
brief abduction, it’s that she’s not just a jewelry designer. “I want to have full
control over the aesthetic of every single thing,” she says. I hope she knows
that all earthlings would be lucky to live on Marina’s planet.