Marina Dempster’s meticulous sculptures are both playful and sacred ‘artifacts’ that intertwine form with function. Influenced by the patterns and cycles of nature and consciousness, Dempster cross-pollinates traditional craft techniques to transmute forms, materials, and limiting habits of thought and emotions.
Loop by loop, bead by bead, she asserts our interconnection and the archetypal tensions influencing the polychromatic ways we choose to orient ourselves. Meetings of opposites throw all questions open, bring levity to gravity and are an invitation into previously unimagined insights. Marina Dempster’s artworks embody a deep, humble and universal reckoning and movement from shame to grace, fear to love and woe to wisdom.
Her sculptural work has been exhibited internationally in over a dozen public art museums and was voted ‘curator’s choice’ at the Cheoungju International Biennale, representing the best of contemporary Canadian craft.
In tandem with her sculptural art practice, Marina is a professional photographer, collaborative curator and intergenerational mentor, most enlivened by what happens when personal practice meets community. She is passionate about igniting arousing creative habits and rituals which foster both self-knowledge, creative development and community connection, leading to positive social change.
© Marina Dempster
