About
Christina Margaretha is a textile and lens-based artist who creates woman-centered art in the woods and grasslands near her home in Southern Ontario, Canada. Her poignant and intimate narratives stem from her experience of womanhood and mother-daughter relationships. Originally a landscape painter, Margaretha’s transition to motherhood sparked a major shift in her practice, leading her to embrace photography and weaving to convey her newfound insights and awareness. Through her introspective lens, she explores themes of personal healing, growth, and embodied spirituality.
Margaretha graduated from York University, Toronto, ON, with her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2002 and received the Tim Whiten Award from the Department of Visual Arts in 2001. Her ongoing textile and photo-based series has been exhibited in solo and group shows across Ontario, including a solo exhibition at Thus Gallery, Toronto, and a six-woman show at the Aurora Cultural Centre. This fall, she completed her second photography residency at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts, Toronto Islands.
Artist Statement
For me, art-making is a powerful process that helps me honour my experience of womanhood while challenging harmful ideas I have internalized from within patriarchal society. I work in nature, staging portraits of myself and my daughter and introducing textile elements into the landscape. I am inspired by how the cyclical patterns in nature are reflected both in my physical body and my inner journey of growth and change. In my work, nature becomes a metaphor for shedding what no longer serves me as a woman, allowing a more authentic and empowered version of myself to emerge.
My work is influenced by my experience as a cis-gender woman raised in a highly religious family. Growing up, our family life revolved around our spiritual beliefs, which profoundly impacted my sense of self as a young woman. I absorbed toxic ideas rooted in patriarchal thinking, like the belief that my female body is inherently sinful and unworthy of representing the divine. Having a daughter compelled me to examine how this mindset had been eroding my identity and self-worth. My art is driven by this painful awareness and my desire to break this cycle for future generations.
The mother-daughter relationship is a recurring motif in my work, as it represents the place where we first learn what it means to be a woman in this culture. To symbolize this important connection, I began weaving strips of red fabric using a back-strap loom. This ancient maternal craft represents traditions passed down through generations of women, but also the potential to create something new. I take my handwoven textiles into the landscape, often performing with them in collaboration with my daughter. Together, we tell stories of healing: between self and inner child, mother and daughter, and woman to woman.
Christina Margaretha 2025
As a woman of settler descent, I would like to acknowledge that my art was created on the traditional territory of the Ojibway, Huron-Wendat, and Haudenosaunee. I thank them for sharing this land where I live and work and commit to walking alongside them with respect and care for this land.