Aliens of Manila: NY Colony

Current Fair

UNTITLED, ART Miami Beach
Cian Dayrit, Kawayan de Guia, Nona Garcia, Pow Martinez, Raffy Napay, Jayson OliveriaDecember 2 - 8, 2019
Ocean Drive & 12th Street, Miami BeachCian Dayrit's textile works engage with faith-based symbols to analyze the images, objects, and institutions that dictate what power "is." Dayrit monumentalizes the anting-anting, a type of charm often inscribed into handkerchiefs carried by Filipinos. Intended to protect the carrier from harm, Dayrit embroiders his works with an imagined iconography and Latin words, creating a constructed sense of mysticism and spirituality.Kawayan de Guia's surreal, tableaux-like paintings emerge as "portraits" of indigenous figures in museological settings. Based in the Cordillera mountain range north of Manila, de Guia's paintings engage with the changing nature of this region in the face of modernization and development, as well as the region's spirituality. The figures are surrounded by European paintings, globes, and bulols, pre-Hispanic representations of spirits or ancestors carved in the Cordillera region. De Guia's works consider the fallout when ancestral spirits collide with Western culture.Nona Garcia's haunting light boxes are the latest iteration of her ongoing x-rays of statues of saints. Catholic families frequently place saintly icons in their homes, which offer the devoted paths to spiritual and physical healing. Garcia seeks to reveal the materiality of the statues, while bestowing upon them a sense of otherworldly presence. She channels the traditions of Philippine spirituality, may it be pre- or post-colonial, into her surroundings and takes an objective look beneath the surface of venerated objects.Pow Martinez: Extensively drawing from the tradition of the grotesque, Martinez offers eclectic and humorous takes on Filipino history, culture, and art as well as phenomena like Pinoy pop culture. Commissioned for Pintô International, Martinez’s paintings Intruder Alert and Border Patrol take an eye toward the resonances of the colonial mentality, past and present. The paintings satirize the psychology of fear westerners have constructed in the face of migration and cultural hybridity, while evoking a contemporary conversation about global consumerism.Raffy Napay has turned to the subject of family, weaving ideas of connection and “endless blessings” into the tradition of old-style portraiture, using a medium that he serendipitously found as a painter: thread. Due to the small studio space and lack of ventilation, he experienced respiratory difficulty with paint and decided to experiment. He turned to his mother — a seamstress who had been working on rags at the time — to help him express himself instead with thread and fabric. Thread replaced paint, and the result is often simple but breathtaking pieces that explore depth and complexity rather than just miming light.Jayson Oliveria (backroom) applies end game strategies for making paintings and incorporates objects or sculptural elements to betray the uniformity of painting. Like most works that straddle along the discourse of the end of art, there is a sense of gamesmanship and dandyism where the artist knows all the contradictions within the work while displaying a keen taste for the obsolescence of style. In 2004, he was among the first recipients of the annual Ateneo Art awards for his exhibit Instinct vs. Learning held at Mag:net QC.Follow us on Instagram for details.

As appeared on Artspace, Art & Artworks, Mapanare

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