MARIGOLD SANTOS
the pace and rhythm of time, floating / ang tulin at kumpas ng oras, lumulutang
25 FEBRUARY 2023 - 23 APRIL 2023

EXHIBITION BOOKLET

In a new body of work utilizing painting, audio soundscape, narrative text, and a large-scale drawing, Marigold Santos reconsiders the Filipino Tinikling folkdance as an act of embodied resilience and decolonization. Tinikling involves four participants; two pacemakers holding parallel, clapping bamboo poles, and two dancers who step together, in and out of the moving poles. With its roots in the Philippine’s Spanish colonial period, Tinikling dancing is an act of Filipino self-determination.

The paintings of the Tinikling dance depict re-imagined and reconfigured Asuang (aswang) shape-shifters from Filipino folklore as the four dancers in an otherworldly setting. Featured in Santos’ previous artwork, the Asuang speak of transformation, actualization, and a plurality of identities in the diasporic experience.

An exhibition text, At The Edge of Not Yet and No Longer by Marissa Largo and Excel Garay, accompanies the exhibition.

Curated by Adam Whitford, Interim Curator

Marigold Santos was born in the Philippines, and immigrated with her family to Canada in 1988. She pursues an inter-disciplinary art practice that examines lived experience and storytelling, presented within the otherworldly. Her work explores self-hood and identity that embraces multiplicity, fragmentation and empowerment, as informed by experiences of movement and migration.

She holds a BFA from the University of Calgary, an MFA from Concordia University, and is a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec. Recent exhibitions include MALAGINTO at the Montreal Arts Interculturels (Montreal, 2019), SURFACE TETHER at the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton, 2019), MALAGINTO at the Dunlop Gallery (Regina, 2019), with group exhibitions that include: Relations: Painting and Diaspora at Foundation Phi (Montreal, 2020) and Esker Foundation (Calgary, 2021), In The Middle of Everywhere at Remai Modern (Saskatoon, 2022), and Human Capital at Contemporary Calgary (Calgary, 2022). Marigold was one of the five finalists awarded the 2020 MNBAQ Contemporary Art Award.

This exhibition was made possible with funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the City of Lethbridge.

Previous
Previous

Next
Next