Mark Maestro is a Nova Scotian Artist originally from the Phillipines. His experience of the craft tradition of pottery acknowledges the traditional vessel form. In his current works, this has evolved into miniature architectural structures that tells powerful  stories of travel, migration, displacement, and the corrosion, often called "hybridity", is in Maestro's case a matter of lived history express through his own his own figurative processes.These reflect on his immigrant experience and his playful incorparation of a migrant subcultural language which frequently relies on displacement and condensation. For example, Maestro is inspired by how a phrase like "boat people" has now been appropriated and subverted by those originally objectified by this name and his imagery is informed by such perceptions.

 Maestro refers himself as a storyteller, making work from scratch, building up his material to its form without reference to any drawings or studies. His connection to clay is primal, a rootededness that speaks of memory not as nostalgia or romantic idealism but as imagination that has liberation potential.

   
Check out Mark's Multicultural

Art Gallery Show

February 29, 2000