The boxer sports a lurid, bedraggled regalia of gloves and athletic pads, but stares away into space with blank eyes. The boxer’s opponent, too, is in rough shape, with eyes—indeed, with entire body—swathed in bandages, head and limbs supported by a scaffold of improvised joists and braces suggesting injuries so fantastic they must be metaphysical. Egged on by a pair of hyenas, everyone is ready for a bout that seems unlikely to happen. Nearby are the figures of two more boxers, their robes like windows into other realms revealing butterflies (recalling Muhammad Ali) and a sunset sky. Not far off are images of gloves, belts and a heavy bag.

All these propositions, the creations of Montreal artist Marigold Santos, herself an amateur boxer, transport us into a world in which the gritty, sweat-stained boxing gym is revealed as a place of ritual and magic. Indeed, the regalia and talismans—the glittery robes, impractical belts, golden gloves—suggest the accoutrements and symbolism of a religious sect. From amid the boxing regalia, the face of Filipino boxing star Manny Pacquiao stares down at us—but here his presence seems spiritual, as though revealing himself to us from some nighttime realm of possibility.

Conceptually, Santos fixes her work around the attributes of the Asuang, a spirit being from Filipino mythology. Not unlike how the wise women of pre-Christian Europe were scapegoated as witches, Catholic missionaries reinvented the Asuang as a menacing witch-vampire, often represented as a female figure, its face hidden by a tangle of long, black hair. Its most notable characteristic is its “segmented self”—the ability to deta