We humans are entangled in a complex web of interdependencies. Magdolene uses sculpture, installation, and mark-making to visualize, actualize, and reconfigure connections between human and more-than-human bodies across space and time, disrupting the fantasy of an independent self. Her work meditates on the power of the small when gathered into a collective, prioritizing slow processes that depend on consistent effort over time. Magdolene works with clay accompanied by supporting materials, including wood and fiber, to facilitate an exploration of broader notions of kinship that transgress suggested boundaries of us vs. them, self vs. other. Clay, textiles, and wood have shaped human cultures around the world. These materials carry memories of touch and place, offering a connection to human and non-human bodies across time and space.
Magdolene’s work reflects on the power and potential of impermanence. She embraces ephemerality and precarity for their poetic and anti-capitalist capacity. Each of her works is impermanent and embedded with the possibility of transformation, eagerly waiting to discover other systems of connectedness. In this way, many of Magdolene’s works exist as momentary configurations in a never-ending process of emergence and decay, a cycle of deconstruction and reformation.