Magdolene Dykstra: Speculative Structures, 2024-2025
Dismantle. Reimagine. Rebuild.
Speculative Structures uses processes of undoing, reimagining, and reforming to reconfigure systems of connection that link humans and more-than-humans across space and time. To create these assemblages, I dismantle structures entangled within networks of exploitative capitalism, including shipping palettes and discarded denim. This allows for material reconfigurations driven by principles of mutuality, care, and collectivity. Objects made of reclaimed clay reference rituals dedicated to transformation practiced by my Egyptian ancestors. These materials – fiber, clay, and wood – have travelled alongside humans since our beginnings providing our first shelters and shaping our cultures. Clay has nourished life since before human existence. Woven fiber provides the first protection we receive when we enter this world and is the last protection we receive before we leave. Each of these materials carry histories of extraction, labour, trade, and power. In contrast to the exploitative systems in which they have travelled, realigning these materials one relationship at a time conjures a gentler way of being with the living and non-living bodies around us.
Speculative Structures emerges from the intersections between my heritage, cultural critique, and a committed belief in the possibility of systemic transformation. This work is rooted in critiques of systems within western society that propose and uphold firm boundaries between valuable and disposable, self and other, human and non-human beings. Speculative Structures operates in opposition to capitalism’s insistence on hyper-productivity, easily consumed products, and hierarchies of value. I adopt processes that insist on slow transformation and relationship-building as modes of resistance. I embrace improvisation and material experimentation as a means of courting possibility while challenging notions of right and wrong ways of being. Compelled by a belief that the objects we make help to shape the realities we inhabit, each gesture within these works is infused with a quiet prayer, a desperate plea, and a fervent commitment to forming healthier systems of relation.
Captions
- Zeer: Handwashing as Care, 2025, still from video performance, duration: 55 seconds
- Zeer: Handwashing Station, 2025, reclaimed wood, reclaimed clay, terracotta, modified textile, found object, 46in x 40in x 14.5in
- Community engagement with Zeer: Handwashing Station at Northern Clay Center, 2025
- Speculative Structure, 2024, reclaimed wood, reclaimed clay, handspun and woven reclaimed fiber, acorn, sumac, goldenrod, black knapweed, 42.5in x 41in x 38in
- bookend to rupture, transform, repair, and care, 2025, reclaimed wood, reclaimed clay, handspun reclaimed fiber, milkweed seed ball, milkweed tussock moth, clay dug in Niagara region, beeswax cultivated in Niagara, gold leaf, 18.5in x 19in x 8in
- a realignment, 2025, reclaimed wood, reclaimed clay, handspun and woven reclaimed fiber, clay dug in Niagara region, asters, goldenrod, water, 37in x 24in x 53in
