| Tina Marais | |
| Birth Date: | 23 August 1977 |
| Birth Place: | Cape Town, South Africa |
| Occupation: | Textile artist |
| Mother: | Retha Groenewald |
Tina Marais (born 23 August 1977) is a Canadian textile artist. She is known for her 3-dimensional fabric and mixed media sculptures as well as her cultural mediation projects.
Marais attended the Open Window Art Academy in Pretoria, South Africa from 1996 to 1999, where she earned two diplomas: one in fine arts, and one in visual communication with a fine art specialization.
In 2008, Marais moved to Canada with her family, settling first in Ontario before settling in Quebec in 2011. She lives and works in the greater Montreal region. In 2022, she earned a Masters Degree in Fibre and Material Practices from Concordia University in Montreal.
Tina Marais has been interested in textiles since early childhood. She has been drawn to textiles due to their variety of textures and colours, their ability to capture movement, and their accessibility as a medium.
Tina Marais' work focuses on diversity, integration, human impacts on the environment, social transformation and immigration. She tries to capture flow, or the element of change within her work. Tina Marais' fascination with movement created by the wind, and the sea, began as a child in South Africa. Human displacement and human environmental degradation are viewed by her in the same flow lines as the wind and sea. A part of her interest in migration and refugees she relates to her own migration from South Africa to Canada.[1]
Tina Marais has been involved in various cultural mediation projects throughout the greater Montreal region supported by the municipalities there.
Sculpture inside Salle Pauline Julien, 15615 Boul Gouin O, Sainte-Geneviève, QC, 2019
307 participants, including adult students in francization at Cégep Gérald-Godin, special education classes from the Marguerite-Bourgeoys School and l'école Secondaire Saint-George worked alongside Struthers making hands out of wire that were then covered in tissue paper. These hands were turned into two large multi-pronged pretzel shapes. Inspired by her own isolation when moving to Quebec without speaking French, Struthers worked with others to whom body language was needed for communication. This bodily communication is represented by the Dance of the Hands.
interior textile wall installations and one outdoor sculpture, 2018–2019,
2017 Quebec flood victims were invited to participate and create works that used the idea of water lines as a starting point. Yarn and copper symbolizing the danger of raising water and electricity were used. The project encompassed six locations.textile installation inside the community centre: 394 Rue Main, Hudson, QCoutside sculpture corner of Chemin des Cheneaux, and Boul. De La Cité-Des-Jeunes, Vaudreuil-Dorion, QC,textile installation inside the town hall, 44 Rue de l'Église, Vaudreuil-sur-le-Lac, QCtextile installation inside the Library 102 Rue Saint-Pierre, Rigaud, QCtextile installation inside the community centre, 74, 7e Avenue Terrasse-Vaudreuil, QCtextile installation inside the community centre, 694 rue Tisseur, Pointe-Fortune,QC
Sculpture inside 190 Avenue Saint Charles, Vaudreuil-Dorion QC, 2014
Through various public and community events, Tina Marais had over 1500 participants committing to the idea of culture and writing their name on a long thin piece of cloth. These clothes were then sewed into long rolls and placed onto a series of large meandering interlocked circles forming a Gordian Knot that were created out of soft 17" tubing. The finished work was approximately 10 feet long by three feet wide and 7 feet tall.