Tina Marais – The Art of Weaving

Tina Marais is a Canadian visual and fiber artist based in Montreal. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1977, she creates large woven sculptures and textile-based forms that explore the unpredictability of human experience and the impact of environmental changes. Her works have been exhibited regionally, nationally, and internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions.

The delicate wounded skin covers the memories of tangled things.
Bodies, once vessels for interwoven narratives, open up and reveal themselves.

An unrelenting tension forms between warp and weft, between human and non-human, a strand of sensory elasticity while entangled memories of territories and objects are traced.
The fabric covering things can be torn apart, the skin of things can be stretched and thinned.

Skin, the largest organ of the human body, possesses remarkable elasticity and an extraordinary capacity for self-healing. It is both our first line of defense against nature and a primary sensory surface through which we perceive and interact with our environment.

Skin envelops the entire body, holding it together, equipped with highly sensitive receptors for touch and pain. It plays a profound role in our identity and in our vulnerability as human beings.

Materials used:
Hand-stitched and machine-stitched linen and hemp fabrics, embroidery, tea bags, pistachio shells, and embroidery threads on linen fabric.

Exhibition Venue:
The First International Biennale of Contemporary Material Art, titled “Material Thinking”, at the Nanchizi Museum, Forbidden City, Beijing.

“The transformative potential of material is what fascinates me most.”

The process of selecting which fragments to piece together, how they connect and interact with their surroundings, is in itself a remarkable journey.

I am intrigued and at the same time unsettled by the path materials take after they have been consumed and discarded by humans.

I use disposable materials such as tea bags to create lines that trace a movement, forming a shape reminiscent of the map of Africa—a vital point of passage between East and West.

The tea bags are filled with discarded pistachio shells, an organic element that also serves as a significant cultural symbol in certain societies.

My aim in this project is to reflect the hidden and underlying currents that continuously transform materials across the world, revealing the invisible networks that connect us through the objects we create, use, and discard.