Marina Szijarto BFA Hons
Creative Alchemy – Artist (contemporary arts /ancient crafts), community shrine maker, ritualist. Ancestral Lineage Repair practitioner (trainee), Artist in Residence at Mountian View Cemetery.
I am a visual artist, animist and ritualist with a diverse and eclectic arts practice working within the mediums of community-engaged rites and celebrations, site-specific installations, theatre and performance crafts. My background includes fine arts and ancient craft techniques and philosophy. I have been exploring the artist’s role in rites of passage (specifically death, funerals, and mourning) for over 25 years and I am one of the Artists in Residence at Mountian View Cemetery in Vancouver BC Canada. I am an ancestral lineage healing practitioner (trainee) and have been studying with Dr Daniel Foor since 2018.
I am a settler on the unceded Coast Salish lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.
I grew up in rural Britain, embedded in ancient traditions and history, before moving to Vancouvers ‘Chinatown’ and the notorious DTES ( Downtown Eastside). I now live in a floating converted net shed in a old Finnish fishing Village, across the road from mega mansions built overtop of prime farmland.
My ancestors are (maternal) of the Dobunni Celtic tribe, migrated to the UK over 2,000 years ago from the Iberian peninsular and (paternal) from the Caucasus mountains ( Russia/ Georgia) to Hungary and Italy.
I now walk between the cultures of Britain and Canada, the ‘old world and new world’, both at home and ‘from away’ in both.
As a working artist, I have found that learning the traditional arts and ancient craft, ritual and medicine making techniques of my ancestors, not only artistically rewarding but also connects me directly and viscerally with a human lineage down through time …my hands are their hands, their hands are mine. Through this practice and the Ancestral Lineage Repair work can come many insights, deeper connections to place/ self and non human family , plus understandings and healings in the larger cultural and political context
