About the Event
1335MABINI is proud to present Nikki Luna’s solo exhibition How to be a Woman of the World. Nikki Luna’s exhibition opens just three days prior to the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25. This International Day aims to raise awareness on violence against women and girls. And Nikki Luna’s work deals with the systematic violence perpetrated against women and girls, in the Philippines and beyond.
Nikki Luna (1977) studied visual art at the University of the Philippines, and she is currently undertaking her masters in Women and Development Studies at the same university. She recently received the prestigious Chevening Award to conduct a master in Art and Education at Goldsmiths, the University London, UK. In 2018 she authored the book I Love my Body to raise body awareness among girls (the book is published by Power in Her Story). In 2016, she was the recipient of a grant from the Asian Cultural Council. She exhibits her work at home (CCP; Vargas Museum; Lopez Memorial Museum) and abroad (Aichi Triennale, Japan; Singapore Biennale; Beijing Biennale; Le Festival International des textiles Extra Ordinaires, France). In 2015, she was one of the CCP 13 Artist awardees. In 2008, Nikki Luna conducted a residency at the Cooper Union Summer Art Residency in New York. And as an activist, she conducts art therapy workshops in conflict zones in the Philippines; Luna: “I believe that art is something that you can share. It feeds your soul.”
Feminism – as discourse as well as lived practice – informs her research, advocacy for women human rights as well as her artistic practice. Luna’s body of work in her solo exhibition How to be a Woman of the World deals with the systematic violence against and utter disrespect for women and the integrity of their bodies. Luna’s artworks bring to the foreground that the body of women – wives, daughters, sisters – is always already politically charged. In her solo show, Luna subtly unpacks the perpetual rape culture; women are victimized twice: first they are assaulted (and those who have not been assaulted have to live with the threat of assault), and then there is the silence (no support from the legal system, politicians who joke about sexual harassment and assault, etc.). Throughout her life, Nikki Luna has been vocal. In Nikki Luna’s words: the “consumption of symbolic violence in everyday narrations begets violence,” and through her beautiful artworks, she hopes that whispers can accumulate to such a swell that the silence surrounding violence can break.
- Curated by Roy Voragen