Hello and welcome to my page, I am a Fibre Artist, Ceramic Artist
Malina Sintnicolaas is a sculptural artist currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia. With a practice focused mostly in ceramic, and fibre sculpture, she explores how emotional energies, associated with depression, trauma, and anxiety can be represented in a physical form. Working through sculptural processes, Sintnicolaas questions the ways in which the material properties of ceramics and fibre might represent the complexities of these emotional vibrations. Her intent is to create a dialogue, not for the viewer to connect with the specific emotion but rather to open up a space for contemplation of our interior lives through materiality, abstraction, and affective works of art. She graduated with her Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University and completed her Master of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She has shown her work both nationally and internationally including the Burrard Arts Foundation in Vancouver, BC, Art Mur in Montreal, and the Canadian Sculpture Centre in Toronto, ON. She is also the recipient of the 2019 Audain Travel Award, the Won Lee Scholarship of the Sculptor’s Society of Canada, and the 2022 BC Arts Council Project Assistant Grant respectively.
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Malina Sintnicolaas
Samples of my work
Artist Statement
Malina Sintnicolaas is a mixed media artist and educator currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia – the traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples. With a practice focused mostly in ceramic, and fibre sculpture, her works are considered to be manifestations, transmutations, or “petrifications” of emotions into a physical form. Both fibre and ceramics are materials that have an interesting contrast in properties, that they can be so strong yet so fragile at the same time, which correlates to the subject matter of her work, because like the materials, the human psyche is fragile, unpredictable, and difficult to maintain. Drawn to tactile materials, her work is questioning ways in which one can represent emotions such as depression, trauma, and anxiety with a physical form and in what ways can one induce empathy for an object even if that object is alien or abstract. Working with texture, surface, material properties, and form, her sculptures are bodily, visceral, and drive to evoke feeling from the viewer, using affect to create an empathic landscape that will urge an understanding for states of mind which are difficult to be described verbally. She received her B.F.A from York University, and completed her Master of Fine Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She has shown her work in solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally including the Burrard Arts Foundation in Vancouver, BC, Art Mur in Montreal, and the Canadian Sculpture Centre in Toronto, ON. She is also the recipient of the 2019 Audain Travel Award, the Won Lee Scholarship of the Sculptor’s Society of Canada, and the 2022 BC Arts Council Project Assistant Grant respectively.