Blair Fornwald, Curator of Moving Image and Performance sits down with Calgary artist Marigold Santos to talk about her Dunlop Central Gallery solo exhibition, MALAGINTO. They discuss the work’s roots in autobiographical experience and Filipino folklore and how this particular body of work fits Santos’ richly multifaceted practice – which includes painting and drawing, sound and video, ceramics and tattooing.

MALAGINTO explores the ways in which ideas of self-hood can become multiple, fragmented, and dislocated and then reinvented and recreated through a reflection of movement, migration and change. In particular, she returns to the memories associated with her family’s immigration from the Philippines to Canada in the late 80’s as an auto-biographical point of departure, and considers the experiences of a young person coming to terms with a new sense of self in relation to their new environment. Persistent in her work is the reference to the creature of fear in Filipino folklore known as the Asuang - a supernatural shape-shifting witch and ghoul who has the ability to self-sever. In her work the narrative is reconfigured; these Asuang speak not of malevolence, but of lived experience, self-awareness, transformation, and empowerment to celebrate and embrace plurality and fragmented identities.

Marigold Santos: MALAGINTO runs November 8, 2019 to January 12, 2020 and is curated by Blair Fornwald, Curator, Moving Image and Performance.