May 2022

an aging double @ MO_Space Gallery

07 May - 05 June 2022

curated by Gary- Ross Pastrana

—Jorge Luis Borges’s short story entitled “On Exactitude in Science” tells of an Empire that took the art of mapmaking to such extremes in terms of detail and precision that a map of one city had to be the size of the city itself, reflecting every element to scale. To this, Baudrillard muses how “an aging double ends up being confused with the real thing,” covering the very thing it was meant to represent. The problem with a map of this magnitude is articulated further in yet another story, this time by Lewis Carroll. Here, the all-encompassing map was said to have never been unfolded and laid out in full, as people feared it would end up covering the whole country, blocking out the sun. In the end, the people came up with an interesting solution: since it already contains all the required details, why not just use the country itself as its own map?

Beyond the desire to map, these stories reveal a shared compulsion to translate and create copies with the utmost fidelity. In turn, through a selection of paintings, videos, objects, and photographs, this exhibition attempts to bring together varying viewpoints to shed light on this impulse to copy, mirror, and mimic; to translate, recreate, or reenact.

Foregoing mere fidelity, even the crudest map should at least help us get somewhere, whether towards learning a new skill, capturing a fleeting image, or navigating unfamiliar terrain.

March 2022

A Reckoning with Reading

25 March 2022

featured works on the Review of Bibliolepsy: A Novel by Gina Apostol (USA: Soho Press, January 2022)

—I was fourteen when, in 1986, Corazon Aquino was elected president of the Philippines after months of mass protests against Ferdinand Marcos and his regime. As I watched the demonstrations, a thread of sympathy flew from my suburban backwater in Rhode Island to Quezon City and Manila. Yellow was the color of the People Power Revolution; on TV, it was everywhere.

In other words, I fell in love with signs, having zero understanding of the realities that produced them. All I actually knew about the Philippines was Marcos was a hateful kleptocratic dictator and that his wife, Imelda, owned a lot of shoes. Although this latter detail is both puerile and irrelevant to the significance of Aquino’s ascendancy, it is germane to my reading of Gina Apostol’s new novel, Bibliolepsy. This hilarious romp through the end of the Marcos regime is unsettlingly pervaded by the topsy-turvy logic of accumulation, particularly of signs. That this accumulation has its pleasures is, Apostol suggests, something we still need to reckon with.

October 2021

Collage Art Workshop x Berroca

October 23 2021 / 2:00 PM via Zoom

To sign-up, go to their microsite: https://superchargedsquad.berocca.com.ph/

Collaboration with WePresent

Check out the post + animated version on WePresent’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CUfN2xUNDrH/

August 2021

Cartellino’s First Edition (with Touki Roldan)

To check out the series of tangram puzzles made for the fundraiser, visit: https://cartellino.com/

May 2021

Event @ ART FAIR Philippines 2021 / Open Studios

Pop Up Landscapes: Collage-Making Workshop. To join, please go to https://bit.ly/3ehvMWC

November 2020

Available!! @ FUTUR:ST

decoding an image, serigraph on Hahnemühle mixed media, 18 x 24 in, 2020

Head on to futurist.ph to purchase a print! ✽

Visual artists and writers against Anti-Terror Law

SolidarityAgainstSilencing.org

June 2020

Live with Art Plus Magazine

#MASSTESTINGPH #JUNKTERRORBILLNOW !!

Watch IGTV: Jel Suarez Art+ IG Take Over

May 2020

The dogs return (Essay for tractions)

“In his mixed-media installation The Black Dog Which Causes Cholera, Lumbera staged a library or archive room, which appeared like a set in a low-budget suspense movie. Drawing from his background as a filmmaker, he wove photographic media, setting, and objects to design a space that echoes the voices within archives.

—As the dogs re-emerge in the crisis of the pandemic, the rule of nature, its power to instigate catastrophe is recapitulated. We are reminded that hauntings are universal and timeless. They enter our lives as sounds, energies, or recurring apparitions. They come as visions, as specters of dogs, shape-shifting and drawing blood.”

Excerpt from The dogs return, an essay on artist/ filmmaker Gym Lumbera’s mixed-media installation, The Black Dog Which Causes Cholera (2019) for tractions: experiments in art writing @ medium.com

Read More: medium.com/the-dogs-return (tractions: experiments in art writing)