Excogigirls.24.07.10.bella.nova.megan.marx.and....
Marx (real name: Marceline “Marx” Duarte) was born in São Paulo, Brazil, to a family of community organizers. She earned a master’s degree in Critical Theory, focusing on post‑colonial media studies. Marx is the ideological spine of ExCoGiGirls, articulating the collective’s political positions, drafting manifestos, and organising offline actions that dovetail with the group’s digital releases.
Key Works
Marx’s interventions are radical yet pragmatic, often translating high‑level theory into concrete actions for the group’s audience. Her name, a deliberate nod to Karl Marx, signals a willingness to engage with the leftist tradition while re‑configuring it for a digital age. ExCoGiGirls.24.07.10.Bella.Nova.Megan.Marx.And....
The visual and sonic language of ExCoGiGirls can be broken down into three recurring motifs, each reflecting a broader cultural trend of the 2010s.
“Marx” stands out as a surname rather than a first name, and it evokes the philosopher Karl Marx. This could be a purposeful insertion of political consciousness or a signal that the group welcomed a non‑female ally (perhaps a brother, boyfriend, or a gender‑nonconforming friend). By placing Marx alongside the other first names, the girls blur the binary of in‑group/out‑group, suggesting an early form of intersectional solidarity. Marx (real name: Marceline “Marx” Duarte) was born
The name ExCoGi is deliberately ambiguous, a linguistic puzzle that functions both as a brand and as a philosophical prompt. Its most widely accepted parsing, drawn from interviews with the group’s early collaborators, reads:
Thus “ExCoGi” can be read as “Exponential Collective of Girls”, but the ellipsis after the names reminds us that the term is deliberately non‑definitive. It is a linguistic scaffolding that encourages us to fill in the gaps, to see the group as an evolving equation rather than a static set. Marx’s interventions are radical yet pragmatic , often
The suffix “Girls” is also crucial. In the early 2010s, the term girl was being reclaimed in various sub‑cultures—girl‑boss, girl‑power, girl‑code—as both empowerment and critique. By foregrounding “girls,” the ExCoGiGirls simultaneously embrace a historically marginalised identity and destabilise the expectations attached to it.