Having emigrated from the Philippines to Canada in 1988, Marigold Santos’ artwork draws upon her efforts as a young person to come to terms with a new sense of self in a new environment. A central figure in her work is the Asuang, a supernatural witch or ghoul able to self-sever and reattach its bodily components. Santos’ Asuangs—appearing here in drawings, ceramics, sculptures, and projected images—represent not malevolent forces but self-awareness, transformation, and empowerment.
Santos pursues an inter-disciplinary art practice, exploring how selfhood can become fragmented and dislocated, and subsequently reinvented. In 2017, she participated in the Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art.
