Participating artists:
Zeus Bascon (Laguna City, Philippines)
Imelda Cajipe Endaya (Metro Manila, Philippines)
Ronyel Compra (Cebu City, Philippines)
Denver Garza (Metro Manila, Philippines)
Sakura Koretsune (Hokkaido, Japan)
Greys Lockheart (Cebu City, Philippines)
Ged Merino (New York, USA and Metro Manila, Philippines)
Diokno Pasilan (Victoria, Australia and Bacolod City, Philippines)
Carlo Villafuerte (Baguio City, Philippines)
Tanya Villanueva (Metro Manila, Philippines)
The Filipino culture has been shaped by hundreds of years of colonization, navigating in globalization, and persisting revolt to self-determination. It is often asked how do Filipinos define their identity because of our history. One of the best responses I’ve heard says that the Filipino identity is a warp and weft, wherein strands of influences and the local grassroots are woven together through experiences. education, and environment. Since then, I’ve always associated our culture with weaving and textile, and rightly so, as our country has an enduring material culture that includes textile. This exhibition is a gathering of multi-generation artists who work and are working with textile. Crossovers of traditional and contemporary art have very few presentation platforms and appear to be operating in different artworlds. It is not surprising though that many artists find the material as a receptacle of meaning that can propel and reinforce their ideas in contemporary art production. Though not all of them call themselves textile artists as they also dabble with other media, they all have personal affinities with the histories and social lives of fabrics. In convening works of these artists, the hope is to make visible past and contemporary conversations on the universal themes of the self, ecology, ideologies, and gestures of care.
Established as one of the local pioneers in feminist art, Imelda Cajipe Endaya has been working with objects and things that are found and are representative of the domestic since she pivoted her practice from printmaking to painting in the eighties. Her works will converse with younger female artists Greys Lockheart and Tanya Villanueva, whose works employ performativity and radical introspection. Diokno Pasilan and Ged Merino, both seniors in the group, work with narratives and are interested in assemblage works that are reflections of the conditions of their localities. The same concepts are translated into motits by Carlo Villafuerte who inhabits punk and Baguio highlands communities, and by Ronyel Compra who resides on an island, therefore, is using self-sustaining materials and the use of frottage technique in production. Zeus Bascon and Denver Garza are queer artists who both operate in the ethos of excess whether in materials, concepts, or feelings towards and in their bodies of work. The inclusion of Japanese artist Sakura Koretsune, who embroiders images of local histories and folklore from her country and mindfully combines text and textile which share the same word origin- the Latin “texere” or to weave, is a way of expanding the milieu.
– Con Cabrera
