Art Gallery of Alberta February 16 - July 1, 2019
SURFACE TETHER The exhibition SURFACE TETHER presents cultural landscapes, emotional landscapes and the natural world through drawing, painting, tattooing and photography. The land formations, rocks and trees are anthropomorphised and should be read as mere surfaces that are tethered to deep and complex ideas about the self. Transition, flux, liminality and an undercurrent of multiplicity run through the work of Marigold Santos and are reflected in the artist’s own identity. As a child, Marigold Santos immigrated to Canada from the Philippines. Her immigrant experience has created a multifaceted sense of self that informs all of her work and shapes this exhibition in particular. Santos works in many media including painting, drawing, ceramics and tattooing. This multidisciplinary practice helps the artist depict continual shifts, to champion change and to create work that undermines binaries. Santos often includes images of the Asuang, a feared folkloric figure from the Philippines reminiscent of a shape-shifting vampire or witch. Although in the Philippines the Asuang has no fixed gender, the artist always depicts her rendition of the Asuang as female. Santos transfigures the Asuang from devilish evil to one who uses her powers for survival and growth. Santos uses this figure to uphold and celebrate human traits that are typically demonized when exhibited by women. At times, Santos depicts the Asuang with untempered transformative emotions who exercises her strength through her weeping. Santos’ shape shifting Asuang is also connected to the natural world and she can literally become the land. Even though the Asuang is depicted in female form, the artist asserts that the Asuang’s robust range of emotions and deep connection to the natural world can be emulated by all genders and to the benefit of everyone. Within Filipino culture the Asuang typically inhabits forests and unpopulated areas. Although stories of the Asuang predate Spanish colonization, it is thought that colonizing forces helped contribute to this aspect of the Asuang myth to encourage settlement into densely populated and more easily controlled areas. However, if we, like Santos, view the Asuang as a misunderstood protagonist, her ability to become the landscape is transformed from something that is terrifying to something that enables her to escape capture or abuse. Within this exhibition we see Asuang in many stages of her transition; she is entangled with grass, her hair plaits with earth, her skin melds with trees and dirt and shrouds conceal and reveal. Is she becoming the 1
earth or emerging out of it? Has she evaded your gaze or is she confronting you beneath a shroud or as a Joshua tree? For Marigold Santos the land is the body and the body is the land. She works to question the western dichotomies between human and natural and between natural and rational. Her work expands western feminism’s discourse around women’s connection to the natural world in particular. Where western patriarchal worldviews see love is like a ghost in the distance, 2018. Acrylic, pigment, women as inherently and gesso on canvas, 137 x 137 cm. contemptibly connected to the natural world, which is the antithesis of men’s connection to a rational intellectual world, the first waves of western feminism sought to reject a connection to the natural and legitimize women’s position within a patriarchal rational sphere. Santos works in opposition to this entire framework and rather tries to deconstruct this binary, championing a deep and spiritual connection to the natural world as not only desirable but necessary for humans of all genders. In her landscapes there is not a separate realm that humans inhabit or a cityscape in which they are confined and from which they emerge only on occasion for leisure and for reprieve. The figures and the natural world are interconnected. Inky blotches cover the skin of Santos’ Asuang and are most clear when she is in a fully human form. Unlike her donning of foliage and woven shrouds worn with agency to determine when and how her body is seen, these markings appear on her body 2
the landscape of my love, 2018. Acrylic, pigment, gesso on canvas, 152.4 x 152.4 cm. 3
shroud (arid interior 1), 2018. Ink on paper, 38.1 x 48.3 cm 4
as symbols of experience worn with strength and pride. The antithesis of birthmarks, these are markers earned through life and are physical manifestations of her human experience. In the early 1500s, upon encountering the heavily tattooed Cebuano Visayan people, Spanish colonizers referred to them as Los Pintados or “The Painted Ones.� Colonization created a stigma around tattooing that is still being combatted by young tattoo artists like Marigold Santos and tattoo matriarchs such as Whang Od who hold ancestral knowledge of Indigenous tattooing practices. Although Santos does not tattoo in a traditional shroud (arid interior 2), 2018. Ink on paper, 38.1 x 48.3 cm Filipino style, her practice is informed by an interest in pre-colonial Filipino tattoos and their contemporary revival. The photographs included in this exhibition are a collaboration between Santos and photographer Stacey Watson. They document a landscape that Santos has tattooed on her close friend Loubert. Loubert has undergone top-surgery as a part of their gender transition. Tattooing over the surgery scars, Santos aids Loubert in claiming their body and marking their experience on their skin. Much like the Asuang, who is able to shift from human form to landform, the strength of both Loubert and the Asuang is conveyed through their change. 5
like a light that’s drifting, in reverse I’m moving, 2018. Acrylic, pigment, gesso on canvas, 76.2 x 76.2 cm 6
moonlight desires, secret fires, 2018. Acrylic, pigment, gesso on canvas, 76.2 x 76.2 cm 7
shroud (arid interior 3), 2018. Ink on paper. 38.1 x 48.3 cm 8
This exhibition is replete with glowing horizons, the sun about to emerge anew or to sink and plunge these landscapes into darkness. The day in transition, these liminal environments hold latent energy and limitless possibility. Cultural depictions of landscape are not banal or trivial observations of the land but environments where human thoughts, feelings and expectations play out. This exhibition projects the self onto the land and the land back onto the self. Do you see a sunrise or sunset? Is that tree ominous and Session with Loubert #1, 2018. Collaboration with brooding or inviting? Is that Stacey Watson. Colour photograph, 76.2 x 76.2 cm transitional moment in the works themselves or in you as a viewer? The works act to reflect states that relate intimately to one’s own experience and magnify our projections on to the natural environment. Human traits have been imputed into the hills, trees and plants but their personalities are only fully realized through interactions with the viewer. The Asuang’s multiplicity, the shift between day and night, the human body in transition—for the artist, the ability to change represents moments of strength and power. Humans feel a strong connection to places for various reasons but what happens when place changes and what are the ways in which they change? What happens when we change place? What happens when we undergo change? What are the situations wherein place or body alter? Is it simply time passing or is there something else at work? Do we dig in or do we see opportunity to emerge carrying only what we need on our backs and taking our memories in our skin?
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Session with Loubert #4, 2018. Collaboration with Stacey Watson. Colour photograph, 76.2 x 76.2 cm
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ARTIST’S BIOGRPAHY MARIGOLD SANTOS Marigold Santos pursues an inter-disciplinary art practice involving drawn, painted, and printed works, sculpture, tattooing, and sound. 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, and an MFA from Concordia University. As 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, she continues to exhibit widely across Canada. Marigold Santos divides her time between Calgary, Edmonton, and Montreal.
WRITER’S BIOGRPAHY LINDSEY SHARMAN Lindsey V. Sharman is a curator at the Art Gallery of Alberta and adjunct professor in the Department of Art at the University of Calgary. Sharman has studied Art History and Curating in Canada, England, Switzerland, and Austria, earning degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and the University of the Arts, Zurich. From 2012-2018 she was the first curator of the Founders’ Gallery at the Military Museums in Calgary, an academic appointment through the University of Calgary. Her primary area of research is politically and socially engaged art practice. Curatorial projects of note include Seeing Soldiering: in theatre with those who serve by Althea Thauberger; TRENCH, a durational performance by Adrian Stimson; Felled Trees an exhibition deconstructing national identity at Canada House, London; Gassed Redux by Adad Hannah; and the nationally touring retrospective and corresponding publication The Writing on the Wall: Works of Dr. Joane Cardinal Schubert.
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LIST OF WORKS regrounding, 2011 Mixed media on canvas 274 x 200.7 cm
on the other side from you, 2018 Acrylic, watercolour, pigment on canvas 101.6 x 101.6 cm
the landscape of my love, 2018 Acrylic, pigment, gesso on canvas 152.4 x 152.4 cm
Session with Loubert #1, 2018 (Collaboration with Stacey Watson) Colour photograph 76.2 x 76.2 cm
like a light that’s drifting, in reverse I’m moving, 2018 Acrylic, pigment, gesso on canvas 76.2 x 76.2 cm the space between the beauty and the pain, 2018 Acrylic, pigment, gesso on canvas 101.6 x 101.6 cm love is like a ghost in the distance, 2018 Acrylic, pigment, gesso on canvas 137 x 137 cm moonlight desires, secret fires, 2018 Acrylic, pigment, gesso on canvas 76.2 x 76.2 cm shroud (arid interior 1), 2018 Ink on paper 38.1 x 48.3 cm shroud (arid interior 2), 2018 Ink on paper 38.1 x 48.3 cm shroud (arid interior 3), 2018 Ink on paper 38.1 x 48.3 cm shroud (arid interior 4), 2018 Ink on paper 38.1 x 48.3 cm
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Session with Loubert #2, 2018 (Collaboration with Stacey Watson) Colour Photograph 76.2 x 76.2 cm Session with Loubert #3, 2018 (Collaboration with Stacey Watson) Colour Photograph 76.2 x 76.2 cm Session with Loubert #4, 2018 (Collaboration with Stacey Watson) Colour Photograph 76.2 x 76.2 cm Session with Loubert #5, 2018 (Collaboration with Stacey Watson) Photograph 25.4 x 30.5 cm All works courtesy the Artist
The RBC New Works Gallery features new works by Alberta artists. Initiated in 1998 and named the RBC New Works Gallery in 2008, this gallery space continues the Art Gallery of Alberta’s commitment to supporting Alberta artists. Organized by the Art Gallery of Alberta. Presented with the support of the RBC Emerging Artists Project.
© Art Gallery of Alberta 2019 ISBN: 978-1-77179-030-7 Editor: Danielle Siemens Design: Charles Cousins Photography: Stacey Watson - pp. 9, 10; Alex Leibner, (courtesy Galerie D’este) - cover, pp. 2-8. Essay: Lindsey Sharman Printing: Burke Group Printed in Canada The Art Gallery of Alberta is grateful for the generous support of our many public and private donors and sponsors, as well as the ongoing support of the City of Edmonton, the Edmonton Arts Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Cover Image: moonlight desires, secret fires (detail), 2018. Acrylic, pigment, gesso on canvas.