About the Event
Catch the final weeks of Pauses of Possibility which will be on view until June 17, Saturday.
Old children’s garments, a towering card catalog cabinet, funeral bouquets, and an altar – these sentiment and memory laden objects are arguably familiar. Pauses of Possibility, Lopez Museum and Library’s first exhibition of the year, brings together Marina Cruz, Kara de Dios, Elaine Navas and Pam Yan Santos as they sift through their personal lives within and outside the context of being visual artists.
A commonality is drawn – they are artists, practicing within the particularities of the contemporary but with images that have inevitable links with the past. This is of course one of the premises of a Lopez Museum and Library show – that it must converse with the materials from the collection. With their nuanced perspectives as women, mothers, (grand)daughters, apprentice and confidante, they underscore moments of quiet and solace, moments we normally ignore, and bare their art to the public.
Marina Cruz has for quite some time now been enamored by the memories embedded in garments. She first created works depicting old dresses belonging to the women in her family back in 2009. Photos of dresses inventoried and annotated are laminated as you would academic certificates and diplomas. For this exhibit, the relics from her family history are painted as they are stacked and stored in her grandmother’s cabinet. With the breadth of narratives that can be taken from these, Cruz has continuously experimented with various media that will bring it to form, from photographs, printing photographs on canvas, painting directly on canvas, and finally, adding embroidery.
Kara de Dios on the other hand is the youngest in practice after only recently deciding to pursue a career as an artist. It is the body – its form and the possibilities of its reappropriations – that beguiles her. Goya’s Saturn devouring his son makes an appearance with de Dios’ version of Mother Philippines wolfing down a limp body. The explicitness of the image sits adjacent to the canonical España y Filipinas by Juan Luna depicting affection and guidance. In another work, she engages with society’s idea and expectation of rearing and mothering. The loaded messages of her paintings and sculptural works are contrasted to the subtle and delicate color palette and medium she chose to work with.
Although morose in nature, Elaine Navas’ depiction of flower bouquets reflects on the different ways in which grief manifests. When people close to her passed away in succession, she dealt with the loss through painting the flowers she saw in the crypt. The work that dramatically welcomes visitors to the exhibition is a do-over of a painting she lost in a fire. Before being married, she would often receive flowers from her now-husband. These she kept despite having wilted and dried. To her, the image she paints accompanies her through life – may it be milestones or everyday scenes in her life.
A former educator, Pam Yan Santos’ featured lithograph work is a giant connect the dots on canvas – a seeming activity sheet that is often encountered in early education. This work mirrors an actual card catalog cabinet that hangs across it. Guests are invited to interact with the work by writing down their thoughts on blank cards provided and sliding them into the appropriate compartment that is uniquely labeled by a word or a phrase preselected by Santos. The work is inspired by a book from the Lopez Library, a compilation of letters written by an English woman in the Philippines, that shares very specific details of the everyday and her observations in the new world around her.
With the prevalence of noise and aggression in today’s milieu, the practice of reflection is often neglected and relegated to a triviality. It is our failure to pause and think about the human experience – for empathy – that renders us inhumane, indifferent and incapable of engaging in dialogue.
Supplementing the works of the guest artists are intimate archival materials drawn from the institution’s Rizaliana collection displayed alongside works by Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo. Taking the Lopez Museum and Library’s collection of works by Nena Saguil and Macario Vitalis.
Pauses of Possibility is curated by Ricky Francisco. For more information about the exhibit and the services of the Lopez Museum and Library, call (+632) 631-2417 or email lmmpasig@gmail.com.