September 21 – December 1, 2024
Collision Gallery
All Islands Touch (2024) is a newly commissioned installation consisting of a large-scale painting and several heart-shaped paper-mâché sculptures arranged around it. When placed on the ground, the painting and sculptures create a personal map that depicts the relationship between the body and the land, presenting a landscape that visitors can walk around. The artworks address the impact of human disruption on nature and the devastation of ecosystems. Tessa drew inspiration from a traditional Haitian lullaby she came across after moving to the Netherlands in 2020.
Tessa Mars’s work focuses on gender, landscape, Haitian history, and the African Caribbean diaspora. Through painting and sculpture, the artist challenges colonial narratives and traditional ideas of identity and geography, embracing alternative forms of collective belonging. Many of the characters in her work emerge from the soil, symbolizing regeneration, survival, and the transmission of knowledge.
Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art and made possible with the generous support of the Women Leading Initiative.
Bio
Artist Bio
Tessa Mars
Tessa Mars (b.1985; she/her) is a Haitian visual artist born and raised in Port-au-Prince. She completed a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts at Rennes 2 University in France in 2006 after which she returned to live and work in Haiti. Mars’s work presents her efforts to reconnect to a Haitian perspective of the world. Her paintings and papier-maché objects have been shown recently in the exhibitions “Your presence does not escape me” at Tiwani Gallery in London and “Who Tells a Tale adds a Tail” (2022) at the Denver Art Museum in Denver. Mars is an Alumn of the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (2020-2022), she currently resides in Puerto Rico.
Exhibition Site
Collision Gallery
30 Wellington Street W, Commerce Court
Toronto ON
M5L 1G4