Marigold Santos - gatherer

Galerie D’Este is pleased to present work by the artist Marigold Santos in a new solo exhibition entitled GATHERER. With this new body of ink drawings, Santos explores how identity is created, transformed, and multiplied. Plurality and fragmentation are at the heart of her practice. The artist allows the viewer to follow her through the action of collecting and bringing together disparate elements, a subjective and at times ambiguous process. The works are composed of objects in part anatomical, vegetable, and animal, with titles evoking at once the material world and the spiritual realm of symbolism and narrative. Through the hybridity of the aswang, a folkloric creature of the Philippines, Santos brings the viewer’s attention to that which is partially hidden, to a second skin of interpretive possibilities. The artist’s work offers more questions than answers, guiding the viewer toward meanings both multiple and intangible, enticing rather than satisfying the urge to demystify the unknown.

Marigold Santos pursues an inter-disciplinary art practice involving drawn, painted, and printed works, sculpture, animation, and sound. She holds a BFA with Honours from the University of Calgary, and an MFA from Concordia University in Montréal. As a recipient of numerous awards and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, she continues to exhibit widely across Canada. Her upcoming projects in the spring of 2016 also include INVISIBLE MOTHER at Calgary’s Stride Gallery and a solo exhibition at St. John's Eastern Edge Gallery. She is one of 25 artists selected for the Alberta Biennial in 2017. Born in the Philippines in 1981, she currently divides both residence and practice between Calgary and Montreal.