Mariko Scuptures

Inspired by the traditional clay statues and sculptures created by tribespeople she saw as a child growing up in Africa, sculptor Mariko continues to explore folk art of that type in her studio. Working with materials such as ceramic, bronze and sandstone to create her figurative sculptures and nude sculptures, Mariko explores mythology, the animal kingdom and more.

Mariko was born in 1958 and was raised in Madagascar, where she was fascinated by the work of local artisans, who created figurative sculptures in clay. During her adolescence, she learned more about different sculpting techniques while traveling throughout Kenya, Mauritius, Reunion Island, Corsica and Côte d’Ivoire. At the age of 14, Mariko decided to become an artist and, because she was too young to attend art school, received private lessons from the director at the Abidjan School of Fine Arts in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. 

In the early 1980s, Mariko left Africa to continue her art education in France, where she studied clay art and sculpture at the Beaux-Arts de Montpellier. There, she became influenced by Cubism. After graduating from the school in 1987, Mariko worked with Parisian decorators. During the early 1990s, she worked as a freelance designer, creating garden furniture at the Terrada Ganges factory.

After Mariko spent a year studying old architecture and rehabilitation techniques at the Université Paul Valéry Montpellier, she moved to southern Corsica, where she established a studio and opened an art school — Artu Di A Tarra. 

From her workshop in the small Corsican village of Santa-Lucia di Talla, Mariko specializes in monumental sculptures made of glazed ceramics, resin, wood panels and recycled materials, such as engine parts. Her work has been exhibited at numerous galleries, including the Galerie Frank Picon in Paris, Gauchet Fine Art in the French Riviera and Miami, Galerie du Port in Bonifacio and Art Basel Miami Beach.

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Inspired by the nontraditional ways Postimpressionists like Paul Cézanne and Georges Seurat depicted the world, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque pioneered an even more abstract style in which reality was fragmented into flat, geometric forms. Cubism majorly influenced 20th-century Western art as it radically broke with the adherence to composition and linear perspectives that dated back to the Renaissance. Its watershed moments are considered Picasso’s 1907 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, in which nude figures are fractured into angular shapes, and Georges Braque’s 1908 painting show, which prompted a critic to describe his visual reductions as “cubes.”

Although Cubism was a revolutionary art movement for European culture, it was informed by African masks and other tribal art. Its artists, which included Fernand Léger, Alexander Archipenko, Marcel Duchamp, Juan Gris and Jean Metzinger, experimented with compressing space and playing with the tension between solid and void forms in their work. While their subjects were often conventional, such as still lifes, nudes and landscapes, they were distorted without any illusion of realism.

Cubist art evolved through different distinct phases. In Analytic Cubism, from 1908 to 1912, figures or objects were “analyzed” into pieces that were reassembled in paintings and sculptures, as if presenting the same subject matter from many perspectives at once. The palette was usually monochromatic and muted, giving attention to the overlapping planes. Synthetic Cubism, dating from 1912 to 1914, moved to brighter colors and a further flattening of images. This unmooring from formal ideas of art would shape numerous styles that followed, from Dada to Surrealism.

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Figurative sculptures mix reality and imagination, with the most common muse being the human body. Animals are also inspirations for these sculptures, along with forms found in nature.

While figurative sculpture dates back over 35,000 years, the term came into popularity in the 20th century to distinguish it from abstract art. It was aligned with the Expressionist movement in that many of its artists portrayed reality but in a nonnaturalistic and emotional way. In the 1940s, Alberto Giacometti — a Swiss-born artist who was interested in African art, Cubism and Surrealism — created now-iconic representational sculptures of the human figure, and after World War II, figurative sculpture as a movement continued to flourish in Europe.

Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon were some of the leading figurative artists during this period. Artists like Jeff Koons and Maurizio Cattelan propelled the evolution of figurative sculpture into the 21st century.

Figurative sculptures can be whimsical, uncanny and beautiful. Their materials range from stone and wood to metal and delicate ceramics. Even in smaller sizes, the sculptures make bold statements. A bronze sculpture by Salvador Dalí enhances a room; a statuesque bull by Jacques Owczarek depicts strength with its broad chest while its thin legs speak of fragility. Figurative sculptures allow viewers to see what is possible when life is reimagined.

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