Marita Dingus
Ancient Ones
Traver Gallery presents Ancient Ones, a new exhibition by Seattle-based artist Marita Dingus.
A vital voice in contemporary sculpture, Dingus transforms discarded materials—plastic, metal, wire, and salvaged objects—into powerful figurative works that confront histories of dispossession and survival. Her practice treats reuse as both a material strategy and a cultural imperative, reclaiming what has been cast aside and imbuing it with memory and presence. These materials are never neutral: they speak to marginalization while also embodying resilience and the capacity to endure.
Ancient Ones centers on ancestry, cultural continuity, and our fundamental connection to the land. As Dingus writes:
“The Ancient Ones represent our cultural attachment to the Earth. This is most visibly associated with Black and Brown people. Their resistance to cultural deterioration brought about by conquest, colonization, religious imposition, and industrialization is a legacy I honor. I celebrate the endurance of our human attachment to the natural world, and our efforts to save ourselves by saving the Earth.”
The sculptures move between figuration and abstraction. Faces are often clearly recognizable, while the bodies are built from pieced-together industrial materials. In some works, hands are suggested through found elements—faucet handles, stones, and other objects—used with a poetic sense of substitution. This contrast creates a tension between the familiar and the unexpected; figures that feel both human and constructed, grounded yet transformed.
With Ancient Ones, Dingus advances a deeply resonant body of work that speaks to material histories, cultural survival, and the urgency of our relationship to the natural world, inviting viewers to reconsider what is discarded, what is preserved, and what must endure.
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About
Marita Dingus - view profile
Born in Seattle in 1956, Dingus attended Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia (BFA, 1980) and San Jose State University (MFA, 1985). She has received a Visual Art Fellowship from Artist Trust (1994), a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship (1999), and the Morrie and Joan Alhadeff PONCHO Artist of the Year Award (2005).
Dingus has had solo shows at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and The Stenersen Museum, both in Norway (2002, 2006), as well as the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA (2005 – 2006). Her work has been included in Nature/Culture organized by The Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh (2006 – 2008), Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC (2006 – 2007) and 21st Century American Women Artists at the Residence of the United States Ambassador to NATO in Brussels, Belgium (2006 – 2010). Her work is in many regional museums and corporate collections. Dingus currently lives and works in the state of Washington and is represented by Traver Gallery in Seattle.
“I consider myself an African-American Feminist and environmental artist. My approach to producing art is environmentally and politically infused: neither waste humanity nor the gifts of nature. I am primarily a mixed media sculptor who uses discarded materials. My art draws upon relics from the African Diaspora. The discarded materials represent how people of African descent were used during the institution of slavery and colonialism then discarded, but who found ways to repurpose themselves and thrive in a hostile world. I seek to use recovered materials, reconfiguring and incorporating them into pieces of art where possible and appropriate, and to mitigate waste and pollution in all my work. This is a creative challenge, but a commitment I incorporate into my professional and personal activities.”