Photo Credits : Evan Marnell
When Evan Marnell first downloaded TikTok, he never imagined he’d be where he is today. Sat cross-legged on his front porch in Omaha, Nebraska, the 23-year-old artist and activist fiddles with his silver necklaces, speaking candidly about the long and emotional journey he endured to get there.
With 1.3m TikTok followers – mostly below the age of 18 – the moustached, mullet-sporting Marnell says he initially felt the responsibility to share his own adolescent experience as a source of inspiration and hope.
“I realised how much value I found in healing others,” Marnell says before revealing his past.
At 14, whilst coming to terms with his sexuality, he attempted suicide, which catapulted him into the hardest years of his life. Soon, he was estranged from his family and encountered homelessness – all during high school.
Since then, he’s come a long way, both literally and figuratively. Originally from Vermont, Marnell finally settled 1500 miles away in the unfamiliar land of Nebraska last year. In his TikToks, he’s transparent about the hard work it took to find a home there – from dropping out of art school in Chicago to advertising his pottery homemade with clay from his backyard. His followers have witnessed his journey alongside him, and with it, they’ve seen his resilience.
“A lot of bad things happened to me and I was hurt,” Marnell says. “But I learned how to heal that pain, and now I’m able to offer that same mode of healing to others.”
On TikTok, he’s known affectionately as ‘the guy who’s always crying.’ But he’s also the guy who’s honest about what he’s dealing with, even if it’s painful or embarrassing. Marnell has found his niche for content, which straddles the line between excerpts from his own life and comforting reassurances to the viewer that everything will be okay in theirs, no matter what they’re dealing with.
With hopes of conveying his progress as authentically as possible, Marnell wishes to show young people in situations like his own that “you can get better, you can find shelter, you can create a family and be healthy all on your own.”
Unlike many TikTokers, Marnell directly addresses the viewer, sometimes with a gentle call to action or like a close friend helping you get through a difficult time. And that’s exactly what his followers love about him. They see Marnell as a safe and knowledgeable guiding light, so much so that he often receives dozens of direct messages a day from people in search of support.
“Young people on TikTok have noticed me being someone that provides the language and words that they’re lacking to communicate how they’re feeling in their lives,” says Marnell, glad to be their beacon of hope.
Marnell’s audience is largely queer, and because of this, he believes it’s important to showcase his comfort in his own skin, especially for younger followers. As an openly gay man who has been homeless, estranged from his family and moved halfway across the country, Marnell reflects on the importance of online representation for young people discovering their identity.
“Queer presence would not be what it is today without coming-out videos on YouTube,” Marnell says, stating how they helped him to come out as gay at an early age.
During the dark chapter of his life after coming out, Marnell concluded that being an artist was the only career that would allow him to feel what he was feeling all day, every day, and also try to make a living from it. By expressing himself through art, especially ceramics, he had an epiphany about the cathartic nature of his practice.
“Art is like this vessel for my emotions, my questions, my thoughts,” Marnell said. “It’s a place for me to put all of this pain.”
Marnell believes that there’s always a purpose behind the art in which he plants those ideas. To him, pain is never felt for nothing. Although he is still in the early years of his career, Marnell embraces this as a summary of his entire practice as an artist.
“I’m going to feel that pain. I’m going to feel that hurt. And I’m gonna do something with it.”
Checkout Evan Marnell’s work : @evan.h.marnell and @greggiana
