Poster

The 2023 Naples International Film Festival Poster is based on the art of Mernet Larsen.

Artis—Naples celebrates its multidisciplinary mission by featuring the work of a living visual artist on the official poster for the Naples International Film Festival. NIFF celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2023, and this year’s poster features artwork by Tampa-based artist Mernet Larsen.

The 2017 painting Raft exhibits Larsen’s signature narrative style, depicting hard-edged, enigmatic characters that inhabit uncanny worlds filled with tension and wry humor. She employs spatial systems that contradict our experiences of reality, rendering everyday scenarios as playful yet vertigo-inducing versions of the familiar world.

About the Artist

Mernet Larsen

Mernet Larsen (b. 1960) lives and works in Tampa and Jackson Heights, New York. She received her BFA from the University of Florida, and her MFA from Indiana University. She is professor emerita at the University of South Florida, where she taught from 1967-2003, receiving the university’s Distinguished Teacher Award. She has been the subject of more than 30 solo exhibitions, including those at the Tampa Museum of Art in 2017 and the Akron Art Museum in 2019. She has participated in over 70 group exhibitions around the world. Her work has been written about extensively and is in numerous public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art and Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and the X Museum, Beijing, China, among others.

Mernet Larsen (American, b. 1940). Raft, 2017. Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 66 1/4 x 52 3/4 in. Tampa Museum of Art, Museum Purchase with funds contributed by Tampa Collects as well as Liz Dimmitt & Piers Davies, Vevie & Lawrence Dimmitt, Mary B. Perry, John Tarapani, Dr. Robert & Sue Isbell, Sandy & Penny Liu, Rick Simonetti, Stanton Storer, Debra Williams, and Susan Mueller, 2018.001. Photographer: Philip LaDeau. Image courtesy of the Tampa Museum of Art © Mernet Larsen 2023.