See previous exhibits

AYKA GO

Play House

Playhouses frequently serve as a stage for imaginative performances, allowing children to create scenarios, act out roles, and dialogue with themselves or others, instilling values such as ownership, accountability, and respect for personal spaces.

In her latest solo exhibition, Ayka Go contemplates the evolution of her artistic journey, with a particular focus on the dollhouse as a metaphor for memory. The artist undergoes a self-reflective process of recreating childhood reveries by folding paper into household furnishings, photographing them, and translating the small-scale paper tableaus into expansive canvas paintings. Throughout this meticulous process, the paper house, with all its creases and folds simultaneously conceal and reveal intimate memories.

Go's exploration through time leads to a returning towards her artistic origins: derived from an earlier inspired work which incorporated reading, scanning, and folding diary pages, and incorporating written text onto meticulously crafted paper dollhouse and furniture, the exhibition suggests a continuation of her enduring theme and process of reclaiming a personal past, while the inclusion of a table with paper foldings and cutouts re-introduces the audience to the ever-developing present. Indeed, the immediate world is a playhouse that offers adults the opportunity to make reconciliations about the roles we continue to play, and how we engage with others whose private spheres coincide with our own.

"Play House" is a moving examination of individual history, recollection, and growth. The artist's maturity is revealed in the existential unfolding from paper dollhouses to a palace of memories, inviting viewers to reflect on their own reminiscences and engage in life's theater.

(John Alexis Balaguer)

KEIYE MIRANDA

Opalescent

In Opalescent, one of the exhibitions opening 2024 for Finale Art File, Keiye Miranda presents a suite of works featuring her signature underwater compositions, which the artist has pursued as a thematic experimentation for years now. In its transparency and ability to interact with light and the objects that inhabit it, water for Miranda is a medium with which to suspend reality, a revelatory domain, a transformative element.

Interested in how water essentializes things, the artist uses it as a lens to examine found objects—often discarded, obsolete, no longer functional—and reveal their material beauty as well as their inherent usability. The rusting body of a sewing machine, a typewriter, a one-armed drawing figure achieve an otherworldly grace as they shine through the shimmering webs and the opalescent surface of the water. Now underwater, the objects are freed from their literal, objective value, becoming powerful signifiers of what the artist calls as “a visual discourse that is constantly in a state of reshaping, attempting to capture the flux of identities, experiences, thoughts and memories.”

Responding to the ongoing rehabilitation of the part of Laguna de Bay in her hometown, Miranda creates a hyper realistic depiction of an aerial view of the lake as it undergoes a massive transformation. Rather than a picturesque view of a scenery, Miranda reveals a deep gash in the landscape, a throng of settlements, and a remarkable sense that something about the lake has been invariably and irreversibly damaged. Two boats bookmark the painting, connoting the lake’s journey “from one state to another where the transience of a fleeting world can be suspended.” A wooden paddle traverses across the work, serving as a a stark reminder of the lake’s long history as primarily a fishing ground for the many communities that surround it.

Opalescent offers at once the granular and the grand dimensions of water which, as Miranda reveals, is not a static element, but one that is capable of altering objects and the lives of people that rely on it. In art as it is in life, water clarifies and unifies the fragmented nature of things.

(Carlomar Arcangel Daoana)

IYA REGALARIO

Into the Land of Those Who Sleep

Wide awake and wading through: Into the Land of Those Who Sleep

In Iya Regalario's new visual epic, the artist continues to make sense of self and society through her signature storytelling medium: pyrography and ink on wood. Marking the 10th year since her first solo show, Into The Land Of Those Who Sleep serves as both a denouement and springboard of sorts that looks back on how the artist's style has evolved and continues to. Eight separate works plus a wooden house of cards explore interconnected facets of social control, tyranny, blind obedience, and Regalario’s personal antidote and response to the aforementioned.

In the three-part series titled “The Last Man,” Regalario departs from her previous framing style to prove a point about the fleshy, opulent few and the lengths they would go to maintain their comfort—at the cost of their own freedom and dignity, as shown in the excess spilling over the frames. While the artist’s usual elements and themes recur in this series, there’s a noticeable shift in tone and choice of elements such as the biblical references in “Son of Man” and cartoonish pop culture nods in “Power Pie”. With her last few shows straightforwardly confronting socio-political issues like the Duterte regime’s extrajudicial killings, the masses’ plight during the peak of the pandemic, and the return of the Marcoses to power, Regalario realizes the need to come up for air and embrace both light and darkness without losing sight of either truth, in order to love life as a whole like in Nietzsche’s philosophy of necessity and ideal of wholeness. In the eponymous three-panel mural, both oppressive symbolisms and comical vignettes show just that. Tyrannical overlords and predator-and-prey symbolisms lifted from both historical and fictional references depict the ongoing tragedy that is Philippine and global politics, including the ongoing genocide in Gaza—but not without acknowledging the coexistence of comedy and tragedy as part of the absurd nature of life.

Regalario’s interactive centerpiece—a house of cards—continues where her previous work Oro: Suit of Gold left off. Inspired by the quote of Dr. Jose Rizal about liberty as that which can’t be “secured at the sword's point”, but rather, ”by making ourselves worthy of it”, Regalario leaves the structure vulnerable to being toppled over and rearranged by viewers, prompting them to think about our personal and collective power to change the status quo. “And when the people reach that height, God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, tyranny will crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the first dawn."

As with the expression “when the crow turns white” Regalario ponders on the improbability—but not impossibility—of achieving freedom and keeping our sights on hope and cherishing joy and life in the same space where we hold anger towards the systems that continue to oppress. As in Nietszche’s Zarathustra, of “keeping holy one’s highest hope”, Regalario continues to do so with art as her vessel. Everyone’s welcome aboard.

(Nikki Ignacio)

MARK ANDY GARCIA

2AM Thoughts

It is said the human mind is not conditioned to be awake after midnight. In the artistic process, nocturnal wakefulness is a norm, if not preferred. When there is stillness and quiet, introspection and creativity thrive. In this space, Mark Andy Garcia’s 2AM Thoughts are revealed in the coded gesture of painting. His recent works are continuation of a string of contemplations previously shown in his exhibitions In Due Time, Chasing Sunsets, Countless Tries, and This too shall pass. Visually, they appear nebulous and romanticized but nevertheless are illustrations of a manifold of actual or imagined narratives.

The artist as storyteller reprocesses the images of the flowers, silhouette of a person or a distant home amidst lush forests, an entranced man. They reappear in various states of Garcia, seemingly as a way of coming back or returning to some sort of emotion, proposition, or disposition. In his developing maturity as a person and an artist, self-reflexivity is discernible. The works When Midnight Arrives and The Morning After materializes a divergence. One shows a precision in its horizon line and the accuracy of the reflection are, in its painterly manner, constitute the clarity and balance; the other appears agile and playful, a bit skewed and in motion, the act (and joy) of painting (and living in the moment) more palpable.

There is a pathway in At a Loss for Words, the field of view disappears at the center. In Garcia’s recent series, he intentionally ends the images inside the edges of the frame. Possibly cueing us that as he shares his 2AM thoughts, we can navigate through them via the visuality of his chronicles. His works are encompassing enough to make us feel the resonances. They equip us to situate ourselves in the orbit of and in art, to find calm in our own minds before or after midnight.

(Con Cabrera)

RAENA ABELLA

Etherized Objects

Raena Abella’s work never ceases to astound. Exposing hand-coated sheets of glass in an ancient wooden camera, moments before the volatile emulsion can dry, she is one of a handful of photographic female artists in the world to have mastered the wet-plate collodion process. It is about as far from a modern digital photo as you can get. The glass plate images are monoprints, nearly impossible to reproduce since the negative becomes the positive. They have a raw, atavistic quality that transforms the mundane into magical images that are spiritual and etheric. In fact an essential ingredient in her process is ether, a substance that was venerated by the early alchemists who believed there was an etheric plane above normal consciousness. By transforming fifty objects that we too often take for granted into a series of luminous images, Raena draws us into her realm of photographic alchemy.

- Neal Oshima

LILIANNA MANAHAN

The Wunderverse: Genesis

The Wunderverse is Lilianna's world that speaks of beauty hope and wonder found in the nuances of everyday life. They are illustrated through characters and experiences expressed in dynamic forms. The show is centered around the concept of the world being pictured in its primordial form, taking reference from dance movements, and inspired by her niece and nephew’s instinct to dance upon hearing a catchy beat in their younger years.

The medium is the message in this show for Lilianna. The use of tyvek and sculpted metal - both malleable but permanent, show the creation of the human experience: we are built through several moments molded over time.

The use of the selected materials reflect Lilianna's process of using maquettes and paper to create sketches, and how experimentation on paper can be translated into metal and other materials in large and small formats.

NEIL PASILAN

Bariotic Feeling

There is a certain kind of courage and confidence as Neil Pasilan claims the word bariotic (barriotic) in this highly globalized world, wherein human development and progress is equated to urbanization. ‘Barrio,’ a segment of a village, and a ‘regionalistic’ attitude are said to be the root words of bariotic. These terms are sincerely ingrained in the artist, not only as subject matter, but are embraced with the feelings of reverence and nostalgia inherent from having been born and raised in the islands.

In this exhibition, Pasilan continues to enliven the values and calm in thinking about barrio-living from his past show Lugar Kung Saan Ako Sinilang. Here with new large-scale works, the ‘special feeling’ one can attribute to transcendence in painting is strikingly emphasized. True to the artist’s consistent play on color and form, the compositional decisions and layering intensify the ideals and actions illustrated. In the works Full Guardian and Dasal Bago Matulog, the central images are surrounded by the serenity of the hues of blue. Contrasting elements of the rigidity of piled blocks and the daintiness of the flora show diversity of living conditions. Rest is preluded by expressions of gratitude and prayer for safety. The artist, when painting, surrenders to the process. The vivid colors in the works Mother and Child and Mano Po energizes the gestures of sustenance and extending respect. The persistence of the image of triangular roofs and stable homes appears to represent communal living and community spirit present in the barrios; that you are never alone.

In recent years, there has been a radical call to prioritize human development that is focused on social and ecological well-being called the degrowth movement. As shown in Bariotic Feeling, we are fortunate to have access to the simpler life–of degrowing. We have the ‘propensity for barrio-living’ not only for longevity of life, but for the promise of spiritually enriched and purposeful living.

(Con Cabrera)

JOHANNA HELMUTH

Gathering Weights

Remaining in our comfort zones carries a certain weight. By staying within familiar boundaries, we can observe life's revelations from a safe distance. However, true growth only occurs when we venture beyond the confines of our existence. In difficult moments, it is often the cosmic forces that compel us to move, urging us to surpass outmoded identities.

However, the transition to a purposeful journey is not always a straightforward, effortless one. For visual artist Johanna Helmuth, breaking free from her own limitations of space and time holds a personal significance. Hearing a humming disenchantment with the rapid pace of the contemporary world, Helmuth sought solace in a four-month sojourn to the United States. In her latest solo exhibition, "Gathering Weights," the artist presents oil paintings depicting landscapes, and a major video compilation, documenting the artist's geographic, and symbolic crossing, navigating and establishing groundedness with the unfamiliar, and creating new memories from spontaneous experiences in a foreign land.

Helmuth's landscape paintings capture the meditative spirit of hot springs, dunes, waterfalls, rivers, and various natural settings. Notably, these paintings exclude human figures; instead, they convey the essence of space as evoked by the artist’s expressive hand, encouraging a mindful immersion in the present moment. In her video work, Helmuth compiles a hundred individual videos showcasing her explorations, walks, and occasional moments of being lost in unfamiliar paths. Without a predestined direction, the artist, through intuitive exploration, eventually discovers a reflection of her past, and a glimpse of her future within this meandering pilgrimage – as artist, and as person.

While the artworks appear to reflect the artist's individual position and presence within the vastness of space, Helmuth's artistic journey reveals an intersection to our shared journey. The weight arising from choices, emotions, moments of being lost, the mystery of the future, the change of seasons, and the richness of experience from moment to moment, collectively guide us to a crucial reminder in the end: Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life.

(John Alexis Balaguer)

FOTOMOTO

Time Bubble

Fotomoto Presents

TIME BUBBLE

FotomotoPH is an organization of visionary photographers, artists, curators, and writers dedicated to promoting Philippine photography through a regular cycle of exhibitions, public programs, and special projects with art spaces throughout the archipelago. By involving a cross section of the community, the organization encourages participation, appreciation, and collectorship. Public programs have included lectures, panel discussions, workshops, and portfolio reviews.

Since its founding in 2021, FotomotoPH has held exhibits and programs at 30 different locations around the country and have featured the works of 120 artists. The inaugural theme centered on Portraits; it was an invitational project installed at various venues in Metro Manila, with a concurrent satellite show in Dumaguete. The collection then travelled to Orange Project in Bacolod and to Ariniego Gallery at Silliman University. FotomotoPH published a photo book on the Portraits collection.

In 2022, the theme expanded to the notion of Home. The Home collection was a juried selection gathered through an open call that reached out nationwide and to the diaspora. It also featured the photographic series of 5 invited artists. The complete body of work was first exhibited at Parola: the UP Fine Arts Gallery. In 2023, it traveled to the BenCab Museum in Baguio and to galleries within the Bacolod Art District. Selections from both Portraits and Home were also exhibited at Qube Gallery in Cebu. FotomotoPH will soon be announcing its forthcoming open call theme.

Continuing to herald the direction of contemporary Philippine photography within the mainstream art market, FotomotoPH presents Time Bubble, a showcase of various stories and photographic media by 22 artists. The exhibit includes a range of practice from photojournalism to fine art photography and mixed media. As part of the Fotomoto ethos, works of veteran practitioners are installed alongside experimental new work. Satellite exhibits such as this, independent from the open call themes, examine the vital role of photography in the evolution of architecture, journalism, painting, sculpture, video and its relation to archives, conservation, and publication.

VICTORIA MONTINOLA

Brighter Days

Brighter Days

“landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.”

- Simon Schama

It is no coincidence that we have named the two main orientations of our viewpoint as “portrait” for vertical images and “landscape” for horizontal ones. Both have been ubiquitous subject matters depicted in certain ways since we had a way to conjure an image. The first, often captures a sense of our humanity enabling us to easily portray a natural standing position while the latter tries to encapsulate our natural world, its vastness and extending horizons.

In Brighter Days, Victoria Montinola attempts to combine both elements by leaning towards the naturality of the landscape while excavating her own memory of the places she has seen and been to. The simplicity and mundaneness of a beautiful vista were not taken for granted, when they could have easily been digitized and captured with a snapshot of a camera, she burrows into those moments and transfers them into her canvases. Just like friends and lovers consumed with their bonds who etch and carve their initials on a tree, on a wood or on any physical object where they have been, she commemorates and leaves a hallmark on her mental vistas with her painted markings over her landscapes.

Her chosen images hold more meaning as they were not mere locations in a foreign or local land but her way of concretizing her longingness to be there, an active participation of seeing and experiencing the moment - her way of enfolding her sense of identity and belongingness to her memory. It exposes something beneath the surfaces and terrains as we are viewing not a mere replica of the actual thing but her view of the wonderment of the intangible, the cultural experience and the lasting impression of it that has been carved in her totality as a person.

BABYLYN GEROCHE FAJILAGUTAN

small ones are spreading

Most of the time, Babylyn sews thread on paper because it’s a direct act of interaction with the material. Poking a hole with the needle, then back and forth it goes through the paper. There is tension because the paper is vulnerable. One wrong pull, the paper rips. When she sees the needle poke the paper, the interaction between the images and words are there.

In “Small Ones are Spreading”, Babylyn made use of paper and thread. She also painted her canvases and papers. Through the process of collage, her artworks are an exploration of the materialism of paper and thread. Her works are about unraveling the self.

Babylyn described her works as almost monochromatic. One work was limited to one to two colors, pink and white. Her paintings are composed with organic shapes and images of her face, clocks, clouds, photocopies of her own journal, and random papers she kept for years in her room. She just played with them. Babylyn doesn’t fill up her works because she is conscious of negative spaces. To her, space is important, it’s like a breather. In her work, she doesn’t want to just stick the whole paper. She “spot glues” so that the surface is elevated above the canvas and slightly 3D. She starts her process with the biggest elements and shapes as the focal point. Babylyn prefers tearing the paper to make the shape, rather than cutting them. It’s so people can see the paper’s characteristics.

Babylyn didn’t force herself to seek a stable concept for her works. The act of creating helped her figure out things in her mind that are often messy. Her thoughts became a map. She just trusts the process of creating and lets the works be.

CHRISTINA LOPEZ

HUM

At the thresholds of human hearing, all experience of sound is atmosphere. The lowest of frequencies suffuses the air, the highest of pitches drowns out, surrounds. Hum cultivates this atmospheric condition as a way to materialize the prolific and pervasive transpositions of artificial intelligence and digital data into experiential and phenomenological qualities. Appropriating technological idioms as diverse as surveillance and advertising’s predictive modeling, Christina Lopez interrogates how we relate to technological infrastructures and the ways in which our experience of the world around us is increasingly and aggressively mediated by technology. In Hum, the artist crafts compelling correlatives to these experiences, how visual and audio data materializes worlds: images become soundscape, description becomes landscape. This is a poetic gesture that thrives as synthetic environment: glitchy models of human ears are scaled down and become cicadas, their songs synthesized from disparate electronic audio signals. This synthetic environment also alludes to how the seemingly mundane technological intelligence of something like Instagram facial recognition filters have developed from apparatuses of war, such as target locking for weaponry and projectiles. The synthetic aspect of this technological discourse discerns the violence embedded in these kinds of mediations, these kinds of transformations or mapping of digital idealizations onto the gritty materiality of the real: from the same technological machinery emerges the graceful choreography of bodily silhouettes generated by running different advertisements through a face/motion tracker. Generative and responsive technologies interface with iconographies of the grotesque, or else creates a feedback loop in which grotesque forms are produced and animated by the very productivity of generative frameworks. In Hum, the terrors of the intelligence of the contemporary age are drawn out until they are unrecognizable in their vicious vicariousness in the everyday. Hum distills this terror, a terror that surrounds us, slowly becoming familiar as air, becoming imperceptible, inescapable as atmosphere. (CQJ)

LARA DE LOS REYES

Salaysay

Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim...

Alaala - a memory, a token, anxiety

Balat - skin, hide, to peel, to mask, a mark

The works presented here are part of an ongoing exploration that delves into memory

and the body as ground, context and material.

A time-based medium, the artist gathered and collected her hair for 5 years to be used

as embroidery thread. Hair - unruly, disorganized, wild, alienates the viewer and yet is

also a symbol of remembrance and a metaphor for the artistic practice the artist

grapples with.

Onto the white skin of an animal’s hide, hair has been meticulously sewn. It is done so

in the unfolded origami pattern of the carabao, transforming the skin into a beast - a

creature of burden, now eternally sewn onto itself. Through embroidery, hair transcends

its physical form, becoming a poignant reminder of the weight of memory.

Situated alongside this, is a series of photographs in which the artist shaves her head

bare. On her left temporal lobe - the region of the brain crucial for interpreting auditory

information, language recognition and forming memories, the palindrome “alaala” is

tattooed. This term carries a weight of meaning that encompasses memory, recollection,

a token or memento. The artist once the needle wielder has now become the needle’s

ground.

Though the body is subjected to temporary bursts of fleeting pain, beneath the surface it

keeps a silent record, a language etched deeper than any visible inscription.

A one-time performance, the artwork itself serves as an archive. The documentation

captures a gradual process: the passage of time. “alaala” slowly swallowed by returning

hair, is a constant presence fading from sight.

“We are accustomed to consider the brain as preeminently the organ of thought. The

brain houses our mind and our memories, and we rely on its information-processing

capacities when we set out to learn something new.”2

However, as a thinking tool, the body is a tremendous source of information, It can

inform the practice of an artist. It functions as an intuitive vessel capable of narratives

and shaping environments.

Another piece is an installation teeming with pinning needles. A magnet, with the help of

the viewer, manipulates the sculpture causing it to be in a state of perpetual flux.

The ever-shifting forms echo the malleability of memory and the fluidity of truth itself.

Defying a single narrative, it reminds us that our understanding of the past is a constant

work in progress. Each time one retrieves a memory we reconstruct it.

This concept resonates with Susan Sontag’s conversation with John Berger as they

discuss the act of storytelling as the dance of truth and lie both products of imagination,

fiction or a reimagining of events that may or may not have transpired.

In exploring our identities, we endeavor to reconcile our ideals with reality. Yet we

personally and collectively fall into the same traps despite our professing never to be

this or that or heaven forbid our oppressors.

When the artist set out to do this work, it was a personal exploration to remember a

loved one lost to a mind-wasting disease. Since then it has evolved into quiet

observations on how, as a society, we are purposeful forgetters. The politics of memory

is always up for grabs. In systems of power, how do we remain autonomous and who

gets to decide how our realities are shaped? (C. Oliveros)

BEMBOL DE LA CRUZ

Beneath the Surface

Bembol shared a saying “Better be innocent to see the objects rather than know the story behind”. He believes this sentiment embraces a sense of innocence and appreciation for things at face value rather than delving deep into their histories. In Beneath the Surface, his paintings show the beauty that lies in the simplicity of observation. By looking at these works, one can marvel over the wonders of the present moment, rather than be burdened with the weight of knowledge.

In the exhibit, the objects he painted were an old couch, vintage perfume bottle, empty food tin can, jewelry box, hand mirror, old trophy, and a hammer. He asked some of his friends to take photographs of their cherished and significant objects. But he refrained from knowing about the objects’ meanings and stories. The object’s anonymity sparked curiosity in him. This curiosity filed an appreciation for the artistry and creativity that dwelled within each captured moment. He relished the interesting beauty that came from the object’s anonymity.

In Bembol’s works, the beauty is on its surface and on the curiosity with the object’s anonymity. Looking at these paintings, an appreciation for the object is present. Seeing a small part of the object, one can see that as simple as the object may be, it has its beauty and appeal. Bembol wants us to cherish the enchantment of the unknown, and savor the joy of discovery without losing ourselves in the pursuit of understanding every detail. (Mica Sarenas)

KRISTOFFER ARDENA

Ghost Painting (Toldo Series): Pagkalalake

Contributing to the global movement of tropicality rooted within the parameters of the cultural nuisances in the Philippines, Kristoffer Ardeña presents a monumental work that conflates the deconstruction of process, material, and narrative while subverting traditional methodologies in image-making. Reprising the Toldo category of his Ghost Painting series, Ardeña references the use of tarpaulins, indigenous fabrics, and other similar textiles as improvised awnings, signages, and sometimes even temporary dwellings. These materials continue to pervade urban and rural landscapes, which somehow forces the population to a phenomenon of adaptive re-use affirming the potential and possibilities of a material.

Nevertheless, Ardeña’s recognition of these surface structures and their presence in the immediate surroundings as essential to the deconstruction of painting, seduces us to consider its invisibility while forging the creation of an image— a reckoning that there is no absolute one hand nor author but rather an entire environment producing the pictorial. Situating his practice within a framework that complements both theoretical and practical sensibilities, there is an exploration into the psychology of images that could only be observed through the reproduction of patterns and also, in this case, the appropriation of texts as visual instruments and perhaps, more so than the contexts that they carry.

Here, a textile locally called “Coco Bapor” is pieced and sewn together, forming a massive quilt. The ornamental designs of the fabric are juxtaposed against texts that mostly spell out vulgarities and obscenities directed at the subjugation of queer identity. The artist compiled these phrases and words in four languages: Hiligaynon, Tagalog, Cebuano, and English. This act can be seen as an attempt to survey collective forms that point to unorganized and unconscious oppression through the violence of language. Yet, Ardeña retakes and relinquishes this layer of power by reproducing them following local practices in making hand-painted signages. This craft is tied to draftsmanship and is linked to the foundation of painting in regional art practices, where academic and formal training in fine arts is almost non-existent.

In this exhibition, subversion takes two forms: imposing the aversion to the methodology of painting as defined in the Western canon and the disengagement of text as an agency of oppression by disallowing any political rhetorical leanings that could enable its aggression—instead, employing decorative and visceral aspects that excursively disenfranchise it from becoming a force of tyranny. Still, the burden of this validation is on the side of the receiver, who participates in formulating the work’s meaning and importance in the same way graffiti is displayed on the street. It is there to goad discourse, yet it could be just an unnoticed vanishing marking.

Ardeña’s postulation on the notions of tropicality has similarities with the cultural movements such as Brazil’s Tropicália, particularly in the discourse prompted by Helio Oiticica in confronting stereotypical images attributed to the tropics as “paradise”. In dismantling the pictorial tradition of painting, Ardeña solidifies his solidarity to such but in a renewed context that places an emphasis on the place of his art-making and the socio-economic associations linked with material and cultural production.

Curated by Gwen Bautista

KIM OLIVEROS

Before Sundown II

Kim Oliveros takes deliberate notice of the fleeting intervals in a day of a child at play. From sunset to dusk and between hours of recreation and rest, Oliveros gives visual forms to these shifts, apparent in the composition of his landscapes, blending realism with ethereal elements — the three-dimensional renderings of flowers appear to sprout out from the surface of his paintings and installations. In the exhibition, his installation made from used kimono fabric resembles a bunch of flowering wild vines and the wooden panels double as a makeshift shelter. The paintings of lush landscapes in muted grey, as if frozen in time, brings the viewers’ attention to the contrastingly vibrant floras, evoking a sense of nostalgia and the desire to return to a former state of being, place, and time.

In Before Sundown II, a continuation of an artistic project, he derives his imagery from the setting of his hometown in Angono in Rizal, attempting to document the changes in the natural and built landscapes over the years. This attempt, intentional in approach, is evident in the process of producing his collage works where he combines black and white negatives with the mono print and blueprint of an existing landscape image, placed layer after layer in skewed alignment, with the resulting image coming out as blurred — hinting at his idea of movement and change. He then gathers cutouts of garments from magazines and playfully arrange them to form a bouquet of flowers overlayed on the surface. Light illuminates the foreground of the image of the collage, while other parts remain diffused, symbolic of the natural life cycle of flowers: from blooming to wilting.

His landscapes are both representational and imagined. Mostly based on photographs he took, he paints and constructs his landscapes in reference to the picture and partly, from memory. He is interested in parts of the landscape that are not captured in the photograph, exploring other possibilities in depicting landscapes that have mystical qualities. For Oliveros, these landscapes are not just mere playgrounds but they represent the extent of freedom that our younger self once indulged in.

(James Luigi Tana)

LYNYRD PARAS

Mga Salita sa Dila ng Apoy

On view at the Tall Gallery of Finale Art File starting this July 4 and running until the 27th, Lynyrd Paras invites the viewer into a realm where words and fire intertwine in his solo exhibition, Mga Salita sa Dila ng Apoy. Paras constructs spaces on the pictorial surface where words slip through, becoming both subject and object, while also igniting actual thoughts in the mind of the viewer.

As the title suggests, the words on fire symbolize the consumption and annihilation of self, paving the way for a new identity to be forged. This identity, however, is recognized as a construct, an invention made possible only through the medium of art. Paras acknowledges that we are all burdened by histories—our own and the world’s—asserting that nothing can be created from scratch.

Rather than shying away from this historical burden, Paras embraces it, layering his work with thick, complex, and multiple references. This approach is an avowal of courage, signifying that even amidst the seemingly impossible task of reconstruction, one must navigate through the interstices of body, heart, and mind, which may often be in opposition or direct conflict with each other.

In Mga Salita sa Dila ng Apoy, words are transfigured into flesh and skin, holding immense power to destroy and create. Ultimately, they lead to possible alternatives to one’s own fate.

-Carlomar Arcangel Daoana

JOJO LOFRANCO

Recent Work

The language of abstraction, eager to talk and speak of its many figures of speech, stems from an aesthetic and visual exploration of its topographical and contextual spaces. It is a spontaneous conversation between the visceral and the cerebral as expressed onto canvas. Here, Lofranco expresses his dialogues. Each element weaves together to form a series of introspective interactions. Every stroke is a word muttered, its breadth betrays the magnitude of its ideas, and the artwork's bright splashes of color convey tone. A quick pass can only reveal so much of the chatter between the fruits of Lofranco's intuition and the fruitful void of the medium itself. It is a living communication animated by the generative energy left by his initial interrogations onto the work. The viewer is then invited to stand and listen. By leaning into the echoes of these interior discussions, perhaps they could hear the whole conversation and decide if it is greater than the sum of its parts. By Rhett E. Hunter

CLAIRELYNN UY

Afterparty

The beloved afterparty!

After the twists and turns of the ceremony comes the promised wellspring, heralded by torrents of balloons that threaten to spill out of the canvases. It is this moment where we can find the freedom to relinquish our inhibitions. Everyone is invited to look closely, to fish out the subjects out of the work. Eyes swim across the works, skipping and stopping amidst the cascading goodies and knicknacks. It is rejuvination born outside the ceremony where even those who lose themselves can find it all back. Uy's work is the cue for the viewer's to unwind past the endless streams of formalities and dive into the celebratory notes of the here and now. Here, the afterparty is crystallized as the overflowing stream where we can find the positivity to recover and reenergize ourselves once again. So let's lose ourselves in the moment and enjoy. By Rhett E. Hunter

WINNA GO

On The Roots and Routes of Diaspora

The diasporic impulse—both an established historical fact and still an ongoing reality for many—inflects almost all cultures, from the refugees finding solace away from their native land to the countless OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) who provide much needed manpower in the different parts of the world. This impulse, so profoundly intertwined with the human experience, is what embroiders the latest works of Winna Go in On Roots and Routes of Diaspora, her third solo exhibition.

Presented through large-scale works meticulously painted to achieve the sheen of silk, Go specifically explores the migrations of the Chinese in large swathes of Southeast Asia. Tracing its origin to as early as the Hans Dynasty in 206 BC, the diaspora became more acute during the 1900s, which saw the conclusion of the centuries-old imperial rule and the bitter conflict between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China.

Robes, against coruscating brushstrokes of gray, bear the enduring iconography of the homeland, such as the dragon and the phoenix, marked by the slow, but steady, unraveling of the hem. The shattered silk may point at destruction, yes, but it could also convey the re-imagination of the possible, the openness of the cloth to be restitched, and therefore be redefined.

Diachronically presenting the unrest, the journey, and the eventual settlement of the Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia and beyond, four works are shown as expanses of cloth, rather than bearing the silhouette of Go’s signature robes. Initially pursued in Go’s master’s thesis, the quartet of paintings capture the narrative arc of the great migrations: from tribulation to triumph, from the roots to the routes of diaspora, as the title conveys.

The exhibition, which expands and provides more nuance on Winna Go’s exploration of identity, heritage, and assimilation, explores the storytelling capacities of painting. For the artist, images are charged with symbolic meaning, traversing cultures and what she calls as the “belligerence of the sea” without the loss of potency, all the while unspooling the threads of longing that connect a soul to its forsaken, by choice or otherwise—but not entirely forgotten—home.

-Carlomar Arcangel Daoana

JEMIMA YABES

for to grow a garden

I can teach you how to grow a garden

in soil that has only known

drought

and withering.

When our city’s garden bed is cracked concrete

watered by the abject labor of its men

disposable bodies hopes dreams;

I will look at a seed and see in it promises of

orchids gumamelas carnations sampaguitas—

abloom.

When this land is hostile to those who seek

freedom of expression ambition thought

I will let cicadas and bees

wander through the expanse of our foliage—

freely.

When all I have known is the violence

of a life born and raised in tropical

hellfire:

40°C summers ablaze with

domestic national colonial impunity—

I will make sunlight feel like a gentle caress.

The fields I roam may have only known thorns

shrubs and weeds that run wild with fury.

I may resist taming; but I also refuse to surrender

hope—

so I seek orchids gumamelas carnations sampaguitas abloom

cicadas and bees unfettered—

kind summers.

I sow tenderness

I uphold hope.

Chesca Santiago

LYRA GARCELLANO

Land, Labor, Life: Tracing 'Progress' in Selected Notes

CYCLICAL MOVEMENTS

The relationship between contemporary society and a nation’s past has long held currency among many scholarly pursuits, artistic endeavors and, dare we say, social commentaries from media both traditional and new. Endemic cultural features are likely traceable to historical and cultural antecedents, providing groundwork for present-day configurations and flows of people, money, and influence. Lyra Garcellano’s current interventions draw from Philippine economic history by foregrounding issues of trade, labor, and land. The three drawings are rendered to provide insight on Philippine labor history dating back to our colonial past. The installation reflects on multilayered posturing of combined and competing forces over territory and land.

An adaptation of Francisco Goya’s painting of a meeting by members of the Real Compañia de Filipinas in 1815 with Ferdinand VII in attendance sets the tone. Established in 1785, the RCF was a chartered company initiated by Francisco Cabarrus under the authority of Charles III. It aimed to create a trade monopoly in Spanish Philippines and its neighboring areas, providing a new fulcrum for Spanish commercial operations in Asia between Manila and Spain. The export crops of indigo, coffee, sugar, spices, and cotton became the RCF’s favored products. As its operations grew in scale and scope, a struggle with other companies over monopoly rights ensued. This and other major conflicts led to the company ceasing operations in 1834. Three years before the establishment of the RCF, Governor Jose Basco y Vargas implemented the tobacco monopoly, which became the main revenue source for Spain in the Philippines for more than a century. In referencing the tobacco monopoly, Garcellano highlights the deployment of women laborers in export production houses. In the 19th century, women also almost exclusively constituted the labor force in the domestic textile industry, which consequently suffered the adverse effects of the influx of manufactured imports. From our country’s colonial history also comes the legacy of the cabo system, a labor contracting system responsible for providing labor to maritime companies hiring stevedores, small scale construction companies, and in haciendas needing seasonal plantation workers. The cabo acted as a labor supplier, who during the US colonial period, formed unions not with the intention of defending workers’ rights but to legitimize themselves as labor suppliers. To this day, the practice of labor contractualization proves intractable in our society despite its anti-labor and neoliberalist agenda.

Territorial sovereignty and land ownership comprise preoccupations foregrounded in the installation titled ‘The Things Before Us.’ The layering of rocks, suggesting Philippine islands for sale (searchable as such online), and markings of dots and lines denoting the sites of EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) between the U.S. and the Philippines, over Murillo Velarde’s 1744 map of the Philippine Islands, which figured prominently in the 2016 Philippine-South China Sea Arbitral Ruling that upheld the Philippine’s rights over its EEZs (Exclusive Economic Zone) suggests an almost stratigraphic development, emerging unsurprisingly in a climate of subterfuge and colonial dominance. The Brandt Line in neon denoting the Global North from the South offers a background drone with which one can agree, challenge, and question the works.

In reflecting on our nation’s past and present experience of colonization, Garcellano casts a sorry gaze at the Philippines, lamenting how things, despite the supposed persistence of change, tend to revert and remain in the cyclical movements we hope we can disentangle ourselves from.

by Carmita Eliza De Jesus Icasiano, PhD

JONATHAN CHING

Sometimes We Even See Miracles

A still life painting normally contains an arrangement of a table and objects, like fruits, flowers, and household items. Still Life had its origins from Egyptian and Roman art but gained prominence during the 16th century. In the Middle Ages, still life was adapted for religious purposes, using them to depict Biblical scenes and to decorate illuminated manuscripts. The term still life is derived from the Dutch word stilleven. Still Life’s portrayal of everyday objects tells the narrative of human beings across history. It is a silent story of the time it was made.

Jonathan Ching’s present exhibit is a continuation of his Art Fair Philippines 2024 show, entitled “They Still Believe We Grant Wishes.” In the show, he explored images of decay and their relation to the unchanging images of fruits and flowers illustrated on plastic table covers. Jonathan’s present exhibition is a still life show, which depicts offertory flowers on his canvases and fruits as his installation. His fascination with offertory flowers began with observing his mother’s devotions. As a devout Buddhist, she kept an altar at home, where she would offer flowers with the belief that these gestures would give blessings in return. Intrigued by the beauty of these offerings, Jonathan captured their transformation, from their vibrant freshness to their moment of decay. He even photographs the flowers before they are discarded, finding an expected beauty in their putrefaction.

In Jonathan’s eyes, fresh flowers are more than just offerings but symbols of devotions and moments of spiritual connection. In Buddhist belief, offerings transcend other kinds of generosity. It is giving a gift to those higher than ourselves like deities or gods. In giving gifts, the person sacrifices their belongings. Such action gives them merit which accumulates for a higher rebirth and eventually release from cyclic existence. These offerings represent the remnants of prayers to the gods.

When the flowers’ time on the altar ends, Jonathan wishes to give them new life. He takes photographs and then paints them. Immortalizing them. Jonathan’s vision transcends them from their original purpose. These artworks of offerings are like a perpetual prayer. Each offertory flower holds a specific prayer by a devotee to the gods. By painting it, such offering is forever kept on the canvas. These paintings of offerings last longer than the object that was painted.

In Jonathan’s current show, he makes an installation consisting of wax sculptures, like fruits. They are associated with candles and fruits offered on altars. They symbolize the offerings that are believed to sustain ancestors in the afterlife. From afar, Jonathan’s paintings appear to simply depict flowers, but up close they become abstract. They invite personal interpretation. Once these flowers and photographs are transformed into paintings, they belong to the viewer. For Jonathan, the viewer can take their own experience and feelings, and reinterpret his work, or even redefine what these flowers represent. It is up to them to decide what they are and probably what they can become. (Mica Sarenas)

JONATHAN CHING

YASMIN SISON, NICOLE TEE

Pattern Play

Pattern Play begins with a book of patterns. More precisely, a book of patterns for 18-inch dolls’ clothes. In this two-man show by Yasmin Sison and Nicole Tee, the two interrogate the role of “play” in art, as well as within a broader experience in their own lives and beyond them.

The concept of “play” has often factored into both artists’ bodies of work as a form of resistance to the status quo. Sison focuses on perceiving joy as resistance to the ills of the world. Her work often has an undercurrent of playfulness, more visually obvious in some than in others, as is the case with her collages and miniatures, which are often rendered in vibrant colour and playful shapes and compositions. For Tee, her inclusion of craft in her pieces — or, rather, paying reverence to it as a primary aspect of her practice — is a dedicated move towards slow living. It becomes a direct rejection of the fast pace of life today, with the constant need to move and keep up with trends that change faster than one could adopt the latest one. Tee’s approach to art-making is an extension of her interior life, where she goes indoor rock-climbing, sews her own clothes, and walks among more nature-filled environments, effectively slowing down her own consumption of both the physical and digital, and offering respite from responsibilities that come with adulthood.

Based on doll part patterns in old books, Sison’s series of collages for this exhibition are all in the stage of “becoming”. Cut and printed using a variety of printing techniques, these elements are collaged together with cut-outs from other children’s books. Rather than viewing this exercise as being stunted in one’s past state as a child playing with dolls, the joy derived from the act, in spite of all else wrong in the world, is what is at play here.

Sison invited Tee to the two-man show, led by her curiosity at how the other artist would utilise these patterns, as Tee is an avid sewer and Sison is not. Another act of subversion: Tee’s diptychs, entitled, “I want to be _____” is a rejection of the phrase children often use to dream up a future career, a glimpse into a future that seems inevitably linked to being a part of the machinery of everyday capitalism. Instead, Tee selects characters, rather than occupations, that characterised childhood and girlhood. Each diptych is composed of illustrations of the clothes pattern, each one sewn by Tee using scrap fabric and off-cuts from her own sewing projects, and used as a reference for the painting of the finished garment paired with the illustration. The combination calls to mind the way these patterns are represented in these instructional diagrams.

Ultimately, both artists’ works are their own responses to a variety of issues of modern life: looking for joy in the face of chaos, rejecting participation in the machination of capitalism, insisting on living slowly and carefully, and finding fulfillment and satisfaction in these small, rebellious acts. (Carina Santos)

MARIANO CHING

Wandering Days

With a very specific and particular visual lexicon, Mariano Ching populates the worlds depicted in Wandering Days with strange creatures in otherworldly environments. In a series of paintings called “Forgotten Title”, Ching creates cinematic scenes with oil on canvas, on identical canvases of 18 x 24 inches. The effect is akin to watching a film unfold, where a 2-Headed Person with Boy and Dog traverse the jungle of alien foliage, the boy looking back at the place they just left, or where an unidentified humanoid creature is embraced by a snake, watches a Pyre with televisions, emitting smoke, and a collection of photographs and memories look on from a pile beside him.

Ching’s narratives are never quite as straightforward as the titles of these pieces may lead one to believe. Although these titles are void of any enigmatic suggestions, the scenes that are inevitably named by these titles are. “Visitor” is complete in its description of the subject of the painting — a creature that looks like a cross between a deer and a wild dog — but the painting itself opens up a myriad of questions. What is this strange creature visiting? And as for the ever-present piles of wreckage in debris in his otherwise nature-filled images (also present in “Public Service Announcement” in the form of a loudspeaker nestled in a tree’s branches): how did they get there?

Alongside these paintings are sculptures. “Brick by Brick” shows two rabbit-like figures building a ziggurat of sorts, both encased in what appears to be wax, and yet fall in line with the style of painting Ching is known for. “Dog and Bunnies” hold monuments with imagery reminiscent of St. Sebastian and creation myths atop their heads.

Wandering Days is a collection of new-old paintings and sculptures by Mariano Ching. Although most of the pieces were completed in 2016, none of them have been exhibited in the Philippines, as they were previously shown in the United States in 2018. The newest additions to this collection of work are the sculptures from Ching’s “Relic” series, massive in comparison to the other sculptures, and resembling archaeological discoveries, from the worlds Ching has just created, unearthed in the present day, six years after these worlds came into being. (Carina Santos)

LUIS ANTONIO SANTOS

CHROMA

“The image, we gather, is never pure or complete. It is always out of reach. It is compromised, manipulated, somehow hardly seen. It is lacking. And yet it persists, perhaps even because of its poverty.”

— Hito Steyerl[1]

In Chroma, Luis Antonio Santos continues to explore the notions of degradation and distortion associated with the fragility of memory, through new avenues in four series of work occupying the Tall Gallery at Finale Art File.

“Fragmentation” is a series particularly tied to memory and its inevitable erosion. Made by layers and layers of images and textures set atop one another — a process that Santos has likened to laying bricks — the resulting images in “Fragmentation” are constructed by the deconstruction of these overlays of images, an amalgamation of deliberate collisions. The last layer is informed by what has been laid down before it, and so the final image is only made visible because of what remains unobscured, by the foundation that has been built to support it.

The ten additions to “Fragmentation” delve further into this notion of deterioration, displaying images akin to compression artifacts, where pieces of data are lost and corrupted. The images are familiar — or seem familiar — like low-resolution images that stop loading and generate glitches. The images that Santos uses in “Fragmentation” are collected from the spaces he traverses and occupies, from foliage to patterns from the sampaguita glass from his childhood home (displayed here, as well, as a screen), tinted in colours of misalignment and discolouration from Cathode-Ray Tube T.V. sets. The images are enlarged to a uniform size and converted into halftones — disintegrated images up close that converge into something recognisable when viewed at a distance, shadows of black dots — and screened in fragments, out of order. Some images are printed repeatedly, while some parts are obfuscated by masking and layering or the blocks of chrome that reveal the terrain created by these layers while also reflecting the space it occupies back onto the work.

Santos expands on his “post-site” series by constructing a larger, inhabitable framework to hold the image: a frame within frames. Made with steel pipes and C-clamps, these structures mimic the equipment used in construction sites. The “post-site” works, supported by scaffolding, are interventions, imitating the function of the objects they depict: as demarcations of space and mediating between the other images that occupy the space.

Chroma examines the incompleteness of an image and the failure of translations and transmissions, never arriving exactly at what is meant to be portrayed. Each person’s own intimate histories with what they perceive bring the reception of the image further away from its initial inception. The intent supersedes the actual image.

Pushing the definitions of what ‘painting’ is. (Carina Santos)

[1] Steyerl, Hito. “In Defense of the Poor Image”, The Wretched of the Screen (Berlin, Sternberg Press, 2012), 31-45.

AUDREY LUKBAN

Behind the Scenes

i. staging a world: a performance, a real event
In a series of paintings, the exploration of stage design takes on a new dimension that diverges from the conceptual rigor of Audrey Lukban’s previous works, focusing on the immediate and visceral connection with the audience. While there's an apparent shift in the aesthetic quality of her paintings– from using purple to employing a tinge of green– the underlying theme remains: life as a stage where our motivations, and eventually our actions, are influenced by external forces and when put under the pressure of prying gazes. Her new collection is a continuation of this dialogue with makeshift curtains, blending the personal with the universal in producing images.

Here, the works emerge from a subconscious connection to the artist’s own experiences and surroundings. Lukban’s introspection is realized through the use of motifs she derives from her ongoing fascination with stage design. Her paintings of green curtains signify a departure from a place of comfort as she starts anew in an environment that is unfamiliar, and perhaps completely foreign to her. Her shifts reflect a deeper sense of transition and self-reflection that has become more apparent in her approach to meaning-making, engaging the viewers to ponder the boundary between performance and reality. Behind the Scenes significantly marks an end and a beginning in her mode of painting.

ii. an all-surveilling state
Audrey Lukban’s interest in the idea of surveillance extends beyond the conceptual to the material. Her installation of wooden dividers, meticulously constructed with numerous peepholes, makes the utilitarian household staple obsolete of their function to conceal and place something out of sight, seeing through partitions that configure our designated private spaces.

By manipulating not only the material, but as well as the functionality of the object, Lukban prompts the viewers to redirect averted gazes to traverse across public and private spaces. This creates tensions in the perceived sturdiness from which visual barriers are constructed — revealing flimsiness of the material through penetrating gazes.

The peepholes like omnipresent eyes reiterate Lukban’s profound commentary on intimacy and the act of observing, bringing focus to the anxious emotion of being watched without full awareness of the act. Her latest installation, a continuation of a series that draws on elements found in traditional Filipino home decors, becomes a critique on personal and societal pressures that stem from the creeping fetishistic gaze behind these partitions, where sights are no longer obscured nor hidden.
Lukban acknowledges the ways in which our built environments and societal norms shape our sense of security, often connected to our concept of privacy. It is through the omnipresent gaze that she recognises the power of seeing beyond the constructs we surround ourselves with. One is encouraged to peep through the other side. (James Luigi Tana)

post caption: In Behind the Scenes, a two-part exhibition by Audrey Lukban, significantly marks an end and a beginning in her mode of painting. In a series of paintings, the exploration of stage design takes on a new dimension that diverges from the conceptual rigor of Lukban’s previous works, focusing on the immediate and visceral connection with the audience. The apparent shift in the aesthetic quality of her paintings– from using purple to employing a tinge of green– reinstates the underlying theme in her body of work: life as a stage where our motivations, and eventually our actions, are influenced by external forces and when put under the pressure of prying gazes.

Her installation of wooden dividers, meticulously constructed with numerous peepholes, reflect the ways in which our built environments and societal norms shape our sense of security, often connected to our concept of privacy. It is through the omnipresent gaze that she recognises the power of seeing beyond the constructs we surround ourselves with. One is encouraged to peep through the other side. (James Luigi Tana)

TIFFANY LAFUENTE

Human Nature

In Human Nature, Tiffany Lafuente brings a fresh, provocative perspective to the portrayal of nature, deviating from its usual sacred or benevolent renderings. Here, nature is neither a passive background nor a gentle muse; it is a loud, uncouth force, teeming with agency and alive with critique. Lafuente’s latest suite of works interrogates the human-nature relationship, suggesting that it is our collective ego that blinds us to nature’s intrinsic power—a power indifferent to human history.

During the pandemic, many transformed fragments of nature into ornamental elements within their homes and offices. Rather than honoring nature’s sustenance, these gestures merely symbolized it, reinforcing a divide we have imposed between ourselves and the natural world. In critiquing this commodification, Lafuente also exposes the fallacies of the wellness movement, which treats nature as a balm for restoring a lost innocence. Yet, her works remind us that nature is anything but innocent. It is forceful, wild, and unabashedly indifferent to the human need for validation.

With her unmistakable blend of figuration and satire, Lafuente makes us the unwitting jesters in a grander narrative. Despite our attempts to distance ourselves from the wild, it exists within us—an untamable essence that cannot be subdued by modernity. In a world where we are tempted to see ourselves as nature’s saviors, Lafuente’s work declares the opposite: nature will flourish without us, and perhaps, in the end, that is its greatest power.

Carlomar Arcangel Daoana

GARRYLOID POMOY

Painting Patterns

During Finale Art File’s 2019 Christmas show, Garryloid Pomoy’s work titled “Single thread” was a painting of a sewing machine. Then, he placed an actual red thread where it would normally be placed on the machine. His current exhibit, painting patterns, is related to this work. In the show, he fuses his artworks with different working techniques from a non art process. He creates a new perspective.

Pins sticking out from a gingham cushion, discolored scissors with cloth wrapped around its handles and a few threads sticking out from the cloth, old sewing patterns with folds and tape on them, and the only new objects are colorful threads used for sewing machines. These are Garryloid’s subject matters in his current artworks. All of these sewing objects show signs of aging and are kept with care.

In painting patterns, his works are a continuation about a conversation between his mother and him. She was a sewer. While she was working and making patterns for his uniform, which were shorts and pants, she told him he should “keep these patterns for the future.” At the time he didn’t understand what she meant. Did she mean he would become a sewer someday too? But these days he thought, what if he incorporated her process as a sewer to his own creative process as an artist.

These sewer’s materials became the subject matter in his artworks. He uses old patterns and brings them into life as a piece of art. He saves these patterns and preserves them again for future use, as a pattern of a pattern. In his current exhibit, he wants to put his own experience and feelings to the artworks. By using these patterns in his own way as an artist, he gives a new perspective to the old patterns passed down by his mother. (Mica Sarenas)

TEKLA TAMORIA

For the Love of Art, and Art is Labour

In Tekla Tamoria’s current show, For the Love of Art, and Art is Labour, she shows her love for her work, the repetitive aspect of making art, and the routine of working as an artist. In the exhibit, Tekla wanted to show her current state and make use of her embroidery skills. Embroidery is her first skill and she has been proficient with it for a long time. For the first time, she also makes use of rotoscoping animation.

Her works are hand stitched and machine-made. She uses used and donated fabrics that show change in the works, from old fabrics into fabrics with big flowers. The threads also change colors, from red to yellow. 80 pieces of embroidery are involved in the exhibit. She hangs these embroideries in a circle around the room, and these same pieces are shown as a loop in a video.

Tekla thought the best way to show the process and how art is work is through animation. Animation involves repetition, and it also shows how art making is labour intensive. Her animation involves six frames per second and she uses 80 pieces of frames. These pieces of frames are fabrics that have her embroideries. The animation is short and looped, and shows repetition.

People tend to judge the exhibit when it finishes, but Tekla shows that after all the glitz and glam, even with or without the opening, artists have routines. The process and how art is made is important for her to show in the exhibit. Making art may be work and maybe repetitive, but Tekla continues to love it. It is through work that she finds a vulnerable state. A state that is comforting, trusting, and where she can be herself.

As we grow and evolve, may we hope to encounter and choose work that we like to do. May we also be able to sacrifice time for the work we choose. Tekla chose to be an artist, and this choice may be forever or may be not. But since she loves it, she is ready to work for it. (Mica Sarenas)