MAAMAANDAAWINAM BEZHIK ANUNGO KWE ROXANNE MARTIN

March 28th – 31st, 2013
Artist Talk: March 28th, 2pm
Opening Reception: March 28th, 7-9 pm 

In maamaandaawinam, (she has a vision), bezhik anungo kwe – Roxanne Martin creates a series of fascinating and intriguing soft sculpture works that represent her visions rooted in her culture. Her series of fabric sculptures and installations blend personal biography with humour, cultural belonging, and social critique to create a magical world of strange forms. Her work creates an imaginary space inhabited by exaggerated forms that defamiliarize the viewer to both the fabric itself and the subject matter depicted in Martin’s sculptures.

The use of fabric as a central material began with Martin’s initiative to create Ojibway moowin children’s language books out of fabric. As a cultural practice Martin’s artwork and her work as an educator is rooted in her experience as a mother and in her childhood. Martin’s approach to sewing the forms decolonizes the conventional methodologies of sewing in that she does not follow a pattern but creates her forms through freestyle use of the sewing machine. Using stuffed fabric allows Martin to engage the viewer’s inner child and asks them to remember the times when we could more easily believe in the magic of the world.  

As a series of devices, magic realism, like telescopes, microscopes and polarized filters, offers us a way of seeing truth somehow excluded from our vision. The world can be both true to itself and true to its books; true to the intellect and true to the imagination. [1]

Through her sculptures Martin creates a sense of the absurd and strange that inhabit our everyday world. The works are fabric but they are not, they are more than that, Martin’s visions transform her fabric to create personal narratives that tell her story.