ABOUT (english)
Magali Jordan MacKinnon is a Swiss artist living in Fribourg, Switzerland.
Magali makes use of different medias in her art. For several years her work has sought to explore the emotional memories that as humans we accumulate over the course of a lifetime. In this poetic, scientific explorer's world, lines, circles and stiches symbolise these emotions , in their thousands-on canvas, on paper and in installations. Each one of these emotions is carefully counted, and the total noted down. This counting symbolises the people need to measure, evaluate and define the unknown in order to find meaning in it. These abstract emotions are one of the main influences of human behaviour and have an impact on human kind's health. At the same time, she learnt and practiced Kinesiology during 10 years to better understand how emotions work in the human body.
At the start Magali's work focussed on counting emotions in (secret) gardens, swimmingpool water, sky with lines, old houses or even a train carriage...all places that are suffused in memories. Later on, her studies led Magali to the actual, living feelings that are fluid and are eternally changing- what she calls the "emotional dress". Impossible to capture in its entirety, all that can be grasped are threads and samples, stitches and pieces of its ever-changing fabric. This dress, constantly in motion, also represents our consumer society and our endless desire for the latest fashions. Then, Magali has drawn and painted bags and cases filled with the im(material) goods that bear witness to our most intimate secrets and come back with the dresses but with a new element : the barcode...
These several stages of Magali's work follow a path from the outside to the inside of one's being. The study of places, then the spaces around ourselves, and finally the spaces inside our hearts and minds, has grown from a personal introspection untertaken in a symbolic and playful way. The new subject about the barcodes makes references of another control : the one that the society uses on the emotional states of each one.This is why, after training in yogatherapy, MJM continues her research on emotional memories affecting the physical body.
The impact of the Coronavirus modified, for a time and in a natural, intuitive way, the themes of her work by keeping a fanciful style, sometimes raw, to get her message across.
1987-1991 Fine art teaching diploma, university of Bern........ 1992-1993 Fine arts, prof. Joan Hernàndez Pijuan, university of Barcelona........ 1996 et 1997 Stays in New-York........ 1999-2000 Studio Jean-Tinguely, Cité internationale des Arts, Paris........ 2000-2003 Work in studio, Fribourg and Londres....... 2004-2011 Fribourg........ 2011-2012 Cape Town(SA)........Since 2013 Fribourg
Since 1996 member of VISARTE (association for professional visual Swiss artists)