Celestial Stance: The Art of Marigold Santos
Marigold Santos’s spectral forms are as layered with detail as they are with metaphor. Swirling amid marbled backgrounds in a feverish dance, they serve as critical examinations of cultural injustice. Their textures materialize their celestial properties as they become fierce teachers of colonial violence, problematic histories, and forgotten ancestry. Covertly, her haunting figural silhouettes aim to illuminate the diasporic experience while intoxicating us with their arcane beauty.
Born in Manila, Santos immigrated with her family to Canada in 1988, and now binds together her rich cultural heritage with her art practice. “A common figure in my work is a fluid and ever-morphing body, sometimes made of woven material, sometimes patterned and shrouded in transparency, with careful attention to adornment and sartorial elements like large hats (salakot) and couture (Terno and camisa sleeves),” says the artist. Specifically, her figures are inspired by folkloric characters from the Philippines called aswang—shapeshifting monsters which typically represent evil. Humans by day, they transform into all manner of beast come nightfall, with a particular appetite for pregnant women, babies, and children. “There are many different kinds of aswang, and their characteristics change from region, era, and storyteller, but commonalities include shapeshifting, self-severing, and hybridity as a way to instill fear and create a cautionary tale,” she says.
…SOME OF THE PORTRAITS DISPLAY DIFFERENT WAYS OF SELF-CARE AND CREATIVE WAYS OF SURVIVAL, INFLUENCED BY PLANTS AND ANIMALS, ALWAYS MINDFUL OF ACKNOWLEDGING THE LABOR OF OURSELVES AND OTHERS.”
This so-called “cautionary tale” was, in fact, fabricated as a warning against indigenous Filipino culture itself. Aswang mythology stems from colonial violence, created as a tool to demonize in
digenous beliefs as well as shamanic community figures called babaylan, as part of an insidious colonial campaign. Santos embraces this dark past by using it as a springboard for self-empowerment in modern times, reclaiming lost shamanistic attributes. Essentially, her forms are reimagined aswang, certainly more personally relatable than they are wicked. “The figures in my work are different from the pop culture depiction of these monstrous beings, and instead they acknowledge this history and focus on self-determination and choice. They are often in moments of movement and transformation.”
Her recent series, shroud transfiguration, for instance, show nude forms in trance-like abandon. Faces often obscured by long hair or transparent veils, their expressive limbs signal the quest for agency, as their dark outlines swim through sepia tones and unknown vortexes. They don’t appear to be of this realm; perhaps they are shapes into which we shift when aligned to our inner drumbeats or tuned to our truest tone. Santos’s use of varying textures and patterns—as in the hand-marbled paper she paints upon with Chinese ink—only intensifies the hypnotic pull of these compositions. Perusing her various collections, she’s evidently worked with a wide range of materials over the years including acrylic paint, ink (on both paper and skin), fabric, clay, enamel, and resin.
THE FIGURES IN MY WORK ARE DIFFERENT FROM THE POP CULTURE DEPICTION OF THESE MONSTROUS BEINGS, AND INSTEAD THEY ACKNOWLEDGE THIS HISTORY AND FOCUS ON SELF-DETERMINATION AND CHOICE.”
Santos studied drawing and printmaking at the University of Calgary, and then earned a master’s degree in Montreal at Concordia. Her approach to learning new skills hasn’t ended there, though. “I find that I gravitate to mediums that will allow my experimentation and research to come forward. I didn’t train in painting or sculpture, but that has never stopped me from pursuing those avenues. I often expand on my practice by taking on and learning new ways of making—trading skill and knowledge with other artists to better expand on my ideas.” She once traded several tattoos for ceramic lessons and kiln access with a production ceramicist in Montreal. While the ceramicist taught Santos how to wheel throw and hand build in her studio, Santos would tattoo her in exchange. “We shared and learned a lot from each other, and I was able to create a large body of sculptural work through that time. The freedom to move from large-scale to smaller-scale work, from paper to canvas, and beyond, is a gift to my practice that allows for it to grow and maintain excitement creatively. What they share is the emphasis on the direct act of making with hands and being immersed in the process,” says Santos.
THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF ASWANG … BUT COMMONALITIES INCLUDE SHAPESHIFTING, SELF-SEVERING, AND HYBRIDITY AS A WAY TO INSTILL FEAR AND CREATE A CAUTIONARY TALE.”
No matter what the medium, Santos manages to retain her deep-cutting style and signature stamp upon any given surface. Even her tattoo practice, which she began in 2017, serves as an extension to her regular art practice, impressing flowy yet precise markings both dark and divine. Considering that her tattoo studio is in the same space as her painting studio, it’s a symbiotic relationship in many ways. Separated by only half walls and different flooring, tattoo clients may steal glances at her studio work; gleaning insight into this work creates a greater appreciation for their tattoo designs. These designs happen to stem directly from her paintings and drawings, and vice versa. “It was a lovely realization to see my images blend and become porous to each other much more than I had anticipated. Another aspect of tattooing that I didn’t expect was how community forward it would be, allowing many folks in the Filipina/o/x community to connect with myself and each other. One of the reasons I started to tattoo was to acknowledge the importance of tattooing in the pre-colonial Philippines, a through-line that connects others to my work,” she says.
Because Santos’s paintings arise first from fibers of personal experience and weave into specific cultural contexts, her work speaks to some visceral place within us while challenging our placement in the outer world. Over the last couple years, her multi-layered concepts have been stretched even further, now probing the vast realm of motherhood, a rare biome of devotion and sacrifice. “Becoming a mother added another layer to the work that includes a hyperfocus on notions of labor—seen and invisible—while using folklore and the natural world to describe the questions within the work.” Many of her paintings are ambiguous portraits, whose shrouded figures interact with objects, textures, and patterns as part of an open-ended narrative.
Being a mother has only given Santos more fodder for mystery to be sewn into her already mystical expressions. “Because my work also focuses on looking forward, it creates a space for rumination on how we move there, and where we are presently. The very early years of being a mother were joined together with unimaginable levels of love, enduring fatigue, and compromised mental health. I asked myself many questions about how we show up for ourselves as we continue to output endless care for our loved ones. When managing the significant topics in my work, and the responsibilities accompanying it, how do we ensure we take time for self-care? So, some of the portraits display different ways of self-care and creative ways of survival, influenced by plants and animals, always mindful of acknowledging the labor of ourselves and others.”
Such are questions about our existential responsibilities which may never be fully answered, nonetheless driving us to invent our own personal mythos along the way. And Marigold Santos has built hers in a visually striking manner that ripples through the skin and bores into the bones of anyone who encounters her work.*
This article appears in our latest issue as part of our Special Insert Section, which is printed on toothy sketch book paper. You can get a copy the entire issue in print here.
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