STORY
Marcus Jansen was born 1968 in New York City while residing with his family in the Bronx. His earliest memories are his close Caribbean family, listening to Bob Marley, the Edward Hawkins Singers "Oh Happy Day," watching Sesame Street, his superhero cartoons, his father watching news, politics, the Vietnam war and seeing protests and Dr. Martin Luther King on TV.
Jansen resided in the city during the emergence of economic decline and the emergence of a graffiti subculture on trains and walls that permanently changed the city’s visual environment around him in those early years of the 1970’s. He as first raised in high riser apartment on the 12th floor with his Grandparents, aunt and mother, a practicing nurse from Jamaica in the Soundview Park section on Boynton Ave.
The same building and year where the Famous Jazz/Funk musician, Jimmy Castor from the Castor Bunch lived only a few floors above. At one year old, Jansen was joined by a German born father, a businessman and historian from Germany who became his first major academic influence and changed Jansens trajectory.
The family, moved to Laurelton, Queens, and while attending PS 156 at age 6, Jansen was included in a New York City student art competition and exhibited a stunning painting of a male lion on paper at the Lever House, in Manhattan. This event introduced Jansen to the world of public art exhibitions.
Jansen left New York City shortly before the explosion of the punk rock and hip-hop art scene while his parents also escaping racial tensions, Jansen was transplanted to a paradox world to the city of Moenchengladbach, Germany, his father's birthplace, also known as the home of renowned German painter, Markus Lüpertz as well as Hitlers right hand man, Joseph Goebbels.
Jansen, was placed in a German-speaking school, faced linguistic challenges and severe racism as the only child of color in the school and town but excelled in art and sports more than academic subjects. He Joined the Army at age 21 and was immediately after sipped off to war where he returned critical about Foreign Policy.
