PASSAGE (for Xavier Art Fest 2019)

For this year’s Xavier Art Fest, Xavier School collaborated with Immaculate Conception Academy (ICA) to enable the installation of 24 curated booths, majority of them solo presentations including my own entitled Passage which Tin-aw Gallery has organized. These booths were located in the ICA DTASC.

An elaboration of my solo show Gather which we put up early this year also at Tin-aw Gallery, Passage showed new nest paintings as well as existing “Hollow Out” drawings and this series’ continuation.

Apart from Tin-aw’s main booth at Xavier, Tin-aw organized my solo booth as well as Clairelynn Uy’s and Faye Abantao’s.

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Return to Sender

“Return to Sender” is my work for Paper Weight, a group show organized by Gwen Bautista and myself for Altro Mondo Creative Space. With this work, I wanted to explore the idea of how objects, in this case postcards, can be an extension or a signifier of the self, how its absence points to its importance to the sender/receiver– its weight. I wanted to discover for myself and, at the same time, demonstrate how objects then can perform action in the place of a body. With the help of our, sometimes unreliable mailing system, “Return to Sender” becomes an attempt to locate one’s self in the world as well as a trigger for feelings of anticipation and introspection about the possibility of losing mail and the elation felt upon receiving mail, which again for this work, is a piece of the sender, the self.

Each postcard was handmade. They depict landscapes fabricated from memory. Each has short descriptions of where I, the sender, currently live, sort of like hints. My mailing address has been erased after they’ve been received.

Paper Weight opened on July 20 and closed on August 12 at Altro Mondo Creative Space.

Paper Weight

How much does paper weigh?

“Paper Weight” examines paper and its convenience and significance. Believed to have been invented in China during the Han Dynasty, paper has always been used for writing and printing. However, the true weight of paper relies on the roles it plays in the society: land titles, banknotes, money, invaluable drawings, bus tickets, toilet paper, and the list goes on. The heftiness or the buoyancy of paper depends on what the society allows it to bear.

The fourteen artists in this exhibition looks back at the different meanings that paper navigates. They respond with a collection that does not necessarily use paper as artistic material, rather, focus on how paper is defined in relation to its function and power; how it manifests its degree of influence. This exhibition presents recent works of Abbey Batocabe, Chicco Ramos, Efren Madlangsakay Jr., Faye Abantao, Gwen Bautista, Kat Grow, Krys Balmaceda, Lui Gonzales, Mariano Batocabe, Miguel Puyat, Pam Quinto, Pin Calacal, Raymond Carlos, and Roman Soleño.

Exhibit will run from July 20 to August 12 at Altro Mondo Creative Space at 1159 Chino Roces Ave, Makati City. For additional details, visit Altro Mondo’s Facebook Page.

Kabit at Sabit 2019

Load na Dito launched the first Kabit at Sabit simultaneous installations in different locations this month which was made viewable only for one day (or so) on May 11. Kabit at Sabit was inspired by the Pahiyas Festival held at Lucban, Quezon every year to celebrate primarily the harvest season but has evolved since. According to the organizers, “This is a project that aspires to problematize the choice of medium, methods of producing, forms and formats of presenting an artwork as well as the definition of art in a given time and space within the everyday context. ” For more information about the project, read its brief here along with the list of participating artists and their locations.

For our participation, Miguel Puyat, Pope Bacay and I installed “Talî”, from the word that both means “to tie” and “tied up” which is emphasized by the intonation mark. We were inspired by how couriers and other delivery services would leave fliers and billing statements in plastic bags tied to the gates. We replicated this filling the whole garage gate to emphasize how much we consume or asked to consume in our daily lives, how buying things have made convenient as they could just arrive at your doorstep, and how we are bound to certain services, products and people.

This project coincided with this year’s election campaign period, and that added not only materials to our installation but in a way and almost unintentionally meaning to the work. I think it is also worth noting that the installation later on became an interactive one because of passersby, especially neighborhood children, plucking the fliers which one of the children referred to as bunot-bunot.

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SOLO SHOW: Gather

From Tin-aw Art Gallery

Gather | Solo Exhibition | Pin Calacal
Tin-aw Art Gallery
6 April – 3 May 2019
Opening: Saturday, April 6, 6:00pm

In her third solo exhibition titled “Gather,” Pin Calacal continues to probe the intricacies of two concepts recurrent in her body of works: the self and the home. She primarily expounds on how these two are intertwined, and the shifts that simultaneously occur based on a person’s physical state and social relations.

The unraveling of these two concepts are exemplified in Pin Calacal’s collection and use of hair as material, as well as her illustration of empty nests and personal clothes – medium and subject matter that are considered manifestations or extensions of one’s presence and individuality.

Reflecting on the intersection between the two, Calacal posits on the characteristic inherent in both: that our sense of identity and belongingness are fluid, and ultimately temporary. “Maybe homes, like clothes or our own bodies, some things we think are always our own, are also something that is shed or left behind.”

Pin Calacal graduated summa cum laude from the University of the Philippines Diliman, College of Fine Arts in 2015. “Gather” runs from April 6 to May 3, 2019. For inquiries, please contact Tin-aw Art Gallery at (+63 2) 750-2595, email info@tin-aw.com, or message us on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/events/349331409258433/