• Mariana creates ceramic sculptures inspired by Mexico’s Árboles de la Vida
• Hand built flowers and vines decorate her sculptural vessels
• Her work explores migration, gender equality and cultural memory

Mariana Bolaños Inclán's journey with ceramics began in Mexico, where she learned how to extract clay directly from the earth. Since immigrating to Canada, working with clay has remained a way of connecting with her homeland and nature. In her Tree of Life series, Mariana reinterprets her country's Árboles de la Vida tradition, richly ornamented ceramic sculptures used to tell stories rooted in religion and Indigenous Mexican culture. "Inspired by stories passed down through generations of women, my sculptures reimagine domestic objects as vessels of memory," she says. Flowers and intertwining vines envelop Mariana's sculptures, echoing Árboles de la Vida patterns and nature's cycles of renewal. She facilitates community art programmes across Toronto, driven by the belief that art has a social purpose.