Marika St. Rose Yeo is a visual artist from Treaty 4 territory, Saskatchewan. Her artistic works and research are concerned with healing, justice and transformation through creative practice. Marika works primarily using both fired and unfired ceramics. Her sculptural vessels emphasize vulnerability and fragility through the layers and cracks of the ceramic pieces.
With the breaking of the vase I engage with the haptics of “gathering”, whether it be broken pieces of earth, memories, acts of love, or guidance from those who came before us. It is also in this praxis that I acknowledge the act of “making” and “re-making” as a gift from the material. This praxis of gathering holds both my care and pain in the work itself.
Marika St. Rose Yeo has a BFA with a major in ceramics from the University of Regina and a PhD in Critical and Creative Social Justice Studies through the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, at the University of British Columbia.
selection of exhibition experience, publications & awards
Solo Exhibition - The Apartment, LatchKey Gallery, New York City, April 2023.
Solo Exhibition - Satellite Gallery, Material as Archive, Campbell River Art Gallery, May 2023.
Group Exhibition, Healing Gardens PoMoArts, February 2022.
Group Exhibition, Vancouver Special: Disorientations and Echo, Vancouver Art Gallery, May 2021.
Co-Curated Exhibition under the direction of Dr. Carmen Robertson, Rose Coloured Glasses, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Saskatchewan May 2015
Group Exhibition, The Uncanny Valley, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Saskatchewan March 2015
Solo Showcase, Studio Exploration I, Outside the Box, Neil Balkwill Civic Arts Centre, Saskatchewan 2014
The Work of Words, Capilano Review. Winter Issue 3.34, 2018. Guest Editors: Emmanuelle Andrews and Katrina Sellinger.
President's Academic Excellence Initiative PhD Award - 2022
SSHRC Affiliated Fellowship - 2021
David Strangway Fellowship - 2021
President's Academic Excellence Initiative PhD Award - 2021
President's Academic Excellence Initiative PhD Award - 2020
Tina and Morris Wagner Foundation Fellowship - 2018
Patrick David Campbell Graduate Fellowship - 2018
Faculty of Arts Graduate Award - 2017
SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Master's Award - 2017
University Prize in Fine Arts - 2015
Faculty of Fine Arts Dean’s Medal - 2015
P3A Dr. Joseph Pettick Memorial Award- 2015
Winter Kiley Carlson Memorial Award - 2014
Fall Freda Mesbur Memorial Prize in Visual Arts - 2013
Winter Sadie and Norman Ratner Prize in Visual Arts - 2013
Scott Allan Nicholson Scholarship in Visual Arts- 2012
Fall Alice Rhea Macredie Award in Visual Arts - 2012
Martha McConica Award in Visual Arts - 2010
Schneider University Award - 2010
Candace Tetrault Fine Arts Award - 2010
recent acquisitions
Canada Council Art Bank - 2023
“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars. This gathering of broken pieces is the care and pain of the Antilles, and if the pieces are disparate, ill-fitting, they contain more pain than their original sculpture, those icons and sacred vessels taken for granted in their ancestral places. Antillean art is this restoration of our shattered histories, our shards of vocabulary, our archipelago becoming a synonym for pieces broken off from the original continent.” - Derek Walcott, Nobel Lecture: The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory