Marika Pratley (she/they/them) is a Queer Greek/Cypriot New Zealander, composer, improviser and performance artist, born and raised in Te Whanganui a tara, Aotearoa. The online launch of It Is Time To Slothersize is timely with the 2021 NZ lockdown for the delta variant, reflecting on lived experience as a working class performance artist/beneficiary activist with mental health issues.

Marika creates both solo and collaboration works across all platforms.  Themes of her work include radical relaxation, intersectional feminism/queerness, mental health activism, healing from trauma, anticapitalism and sloths.
Ongoing music projects include Moody V and The Menstrual Cycle (with Madison Van Staden), Reptilian Future Cops (with Matt Hunt), Greek Rembetika band Kali Ora and  performing with sister Heleyni Pratley.

Marika's performance art works include multiple collaborations with Virginia Kennard,  Mega Pash Action, and Richard Orjis including performances at Queer Pavilion for  Auckland Pride Festival 2020. She has also scored installations, dance and theatre works, including Orjis cruising lazing learning for the About Walking series, and the award winning dance works Demi God Half Human (excerpt) and An Unfortunate Willingness To Agree.

Solo work includes avant-garde meditation musical A Symphony of Sloths and deluge project Class War On The Dance Floor. She has performed festivals and live events around Aotearoa and abroad. 

In 2021 Marika and sister Heleyni Pratley will be the recipients of the inaugural Pyramid Club and Museums Wellington  Thomas King Observatory Residency, extending on sibling collaboration with astrophysicist sibling Dr Luke Pratley. Marika is currently producing an autobiographical documentary, The Healing Power of The Sloth, and intends to release debut Class War On The Dance Floor album this summer.

Links here to their website, Bandcamp, and Soundcloud.