Artist Profile: Margaret Schneider
Overview
Margaret Schneider (they/she), known professionally as Scared Cicada, is a queer, nonbinary third-generation artist, writer, and musician. Originally from the Midwest and now based in Queens, Schneider’s work draws on maternal Russian-Ukrainian lineage and urban mysticism to confront ancestral trauma, ecological grief, and queer identity. Through layered, emotionally charged compositions, they blend the visionary with the vulnerable—creating portals where memory, mythology, and activism meet.
Deeply influenced by their family’s history as immigrants who fled Odessa, Schneider’s practice explores how displacement, resilience, and cultural inheritance shape both personal and collective identities. Their work spans mixed media, drawing, and experimental prose—each medium becoming a form of reverent disruption.
Featured Artwork
Bushwick Gallery
Artwork Title: These Crushing Defeats
Year of Creation: 2024
Medium: Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 24 in x 24 in x 1 in
Location: Astoria, NY, USA
Description:
Created atop a discarded canvas found on a walk to Socrates Sculpture Park, These Crushing Defeats transforms a relic of heartbreak into a devotional act of healing. Schneider overlays the original collage with vibrant layers of acrylic, handwritten affirmations, and symbolic motifs—wings, stars, hearts. At once chaotic and luminous, the piece reads as part spell, part confessional, capturing the messy clarity of growth through grief. It’s an offering to resilience, a reclamation of pain through color, texture, and care.