Marina Diamandis

♡ G R O S S E R I E S ♡ #teen idles

Marina Diamandis is a Welsh/Greek singer, song-writer and producer currently known mononymously as MARINA and previously known as Marina and the Diamonds.

♡ I ’ D R A T H E R H A V E A B O T T L E I N F R O N T O F M E T H A N A F R O N T A L L O B O T O M Y ♡ #Primadonna

♡ E L E C T R A ’ S B E D R O O M ♡
#subarbiea

‘Electra Heart’ Album Artwork

I found Diamandis’ work within her second studio album, ‘Electra Heart’ (2012) to follow a very similar theme to my work. The album follows the titular character also referred to as Electra Heart who portrays representations of female archetypes in typically American popular culture. Playing the role of Electra herself, she plays roles of housewife, beauty queen, home wrecker and idle teen for example. She combined the concept of the American Dream and Greek tragedy to create a strong visualisation and story to compliment her music.

♡ W I T H T H E N E W S P A P E R S T R I K E O N , I W O U L D N’ T C O N S I D E R D Y I N G … ♡ #Primadonna #electra heart #the archetypes

Diamandis was inspired by the mini-stars of the internet, specifically on tumblr. Starting this project in 2011, in the height of tumblr, people would share images of random people, sometimes models often just everyday users. Many of these images of strangers would have little to no context or background to the people in these viral images – to Diamandis they were just anonymous faces. This intrigued her so whilst traveling across the U.S. she began taking pictures of herself, trying to look different in each image, this developed into the character of Electra Heart. She herself made a blog for Electra Heart. This is where she built up the characters story, hinted teasers of lyrics/aesthetics of the upcoming album and generally interacted with fans.

The project was described by Diamandis as an “ode to Cindy [Sherman]” and had intended for the work to be shown in a photography exhibition format. She planned to separate the series distinguished the four main archetype characteristics of Electra (housewife, beauty queen, home wrecker, idle teen). However, with constraints in funding and the release of singles mixing between different archetypes, the work was only presented online through her blog and in music videos, album promotion and merchandise.

♡ MY HUSBAND SAID IT WAS HIM OR THE CAT. I MISS HIM SOMETIMES ♡

The character was killed off in the music video of the song “Electa Heart”, with Diamandis posting “Goodbye, Electra Heart!” on Twitter the same day the video was released. (8th of August 2013)