CV

Marley Howard (She/They) is an Afro-Caribbean singer-songwriter and visual artist born in Manchester, Connecticut, currently living in New York City. Howard’s work is rooted in Black American traditions and draws from surrealism and protest. In a home filled with Richard Brautigan’s poetry, Reggae music blaring, her parents' appreciation for the arts encouraged her to pursue both art forms. Growing up, Marley studied jazz for over a decade, culminating in a degree in Jazz voice from Oberlin Conservatory (Class of 2024) and curating her passion for Black American Music History and the preservation and archive of Black arts.

 Marley’s art practice involves mixed-media pieces combining collage, painting, and printmaking. Her works offer a space to decontextualize and reimagine archival images, helping her to explore the tension between fantasy and lived history. The process of their work reflects how Black and Brown communities have continually reinvented themselves for survival under colonialism and systemic oppression. Her works contemplate generational lineage and history, music, memory, body horror, and identity. Marley has exhibited works across the East Coast that are evocative and powerful with a dystopian undertone. 

Ms.Howard has performed in some of the biggest stadiums and the most intimate of venues in New York City. She performs in several configurations for her original music, which fuses jazz and alternative with new-age electronics. Her sound is matched with bewitching lyricism and storytelling. Howard has also lent their voice to performance art pieces by prominent artists Sonia Boyce and Roberto Lugo. Marley also serves as the youngest member of the Resistance Revival Chorus, a 25-piece group of femme singers focused on keeping protest music and freedom songs alive. She intends to create honest work that people can see themselves in. 

Marley is currently an artist in residence at APNE AAP (a grassroots movement to end sex trafficking) and is in post-production for her debut EP, supported by the YoungArts Creative Grant awarded to her in 2025.