Art review: The daring of confessional art in ‘Curved House’

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Text and photos by KATRINA STUART SANTIAGO September 6, 2012
The precariousness of confession is its promise: of a revelation, one that is grand because unexpected, one that will shock if not awe the listener, because what it can only be about is something we collectively silence. The admission as such banks on a truth that will be believable because possible, if not familiar. But what of the limits of confession, in as much as truth might only be revealed through words? What happens when it is art that functions as confessional, and art making becomes the confession?
This question informs the group exhibit of women artists entitled “Curved House,” which tasked itself with two intertwined difficult projects: to speak of the things we silence about the home on one hand, to pay tribute to Louise Bourgeois on the other. The former is a challenge more than anything else to render that which is not only personal but might also necessarily be painful or embarrassing or shameful through art making. The latter is about Bourgeois being the mother of confessional art, who did art as symbols by default of her real relationships.

AJ Tolentino’s “Ghost Looking In”

Uncomfortable with the question: what inspired you to make this piece of art? “Curved House” could only be a grand display of confessions about the home, the relationships within it, the crises contingent upon the woman’s roles in its making. In a nation where the creation of the home is a necessary engagement with the Pinoy Church and its rules, where marriages don’t end no matter how oppressive, where we are all expected to be obedient wives, and mothers who do not let our children go, therein lies confessions that might be personal, but can only speak to the collective. At least a collective of women that makes this the most uncanny of articulations: a collective confession? Maybe.

COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE:

“The New Army” (A tribute to Louise Bourgeois)

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“I do, I undo, I redo.” (LB, 2000)

This “New Army” is a remake of the seven phallic pairs that comprised The Army  of worshippers in my 1992 inscape, TheTemple of the Sun God: seven “Iambes” (female/uncircumsized, with a livecast pair of legs) and another seven, slightly taller Phallics (male/circumsized). This time I had a different intention: to redo them as a tribute to Louise Bourgeois. It is a maquette army in answer to her 1968 “Fillette”, a suspended latex phallus swathed in a baby blanket.

“I consider the masculine attributes to be extremely delicate, they’re objects that the woman, thus myself, must protect.”  (LB 1989)

No longer half-crazed with passion and lust, the new army are now guardians more than fighters.

“I transform hatred into love.” (LB on Utube)

The cicada came last. I had been waiting for a sign: what/whoever comes to me will be It, thinking of dragon/ butterfly visitations in the past.

It is May, the month of many birthdays of people dear to me, like my daughter Mishka and an old friend, Hilda from Havana. I’d been thinking a lot about her lately. On her second visit to our home she was entranced by the sound that would emerge from the garden like clockwork at 6.30 every evening.  Cicadas. That crickety sound emanating from the earth and the trees … some call it “chirping”.

Suddenly I was yanked back to the present- bumped from behind my head by a big insect- was it a beetle? They’re quite common too, in May, but no- there it alighted, poised at the tip of my 1992 Straggler grand phallus- it had huge eyes, transparent wings and a green body. This is It! Here She is. Last but not least- Cicada for Hilda. Before that, Spider for Louise, Horseshoe Crab for Luigi, Owl for Duddley, Tengu for Ushiro, and, in wish-fulfillment mode, Billy and I as serene Sage/Sagesse.

-Agnes Arellano
May 2012

Weaving as Therapy says the Spider Woman

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I’ve always had restless hands. In times of emotional crisis, (and I’ve had many recently), I discovered, purely by accident, a technique to crochet with just my two hands. When the swells of life’s seas tower over me, I resorted to doing this as my way of centering myself. Call it like a mantra or a rosary, if you will. And it has worked so far. Thus, in the course of the daily living, I have finished balls of yarn without really knowing what I was going to use it for. The resulting work looks delicate and pretty in an organic way, much like vines are. But they are, as is, just rolls of intricate twine.
I realized, with this exhibit that in a way, I was like a spider, working on these threads, but not making any webs. The house I grew up had become a favorite breeding place of a myriad of species of spiders, from the tarantula size but harmless brown spiders, to the tiny “daddy-long-legs” spiders that made delicate clouds of web. At least they controlled mosquitoes, I thought. I left them mostly alone.
I had recently accomplished, that much cherished dream, that is, to renovate the house I grew up in make it a real place where I can relax and smell the roses, and honor the people who raised me. As I planted my garden, I realized that some of my plants have come from some distance away, and in a way, so was I, being an adopted child. I now am on the process of planting two gardens, and predictably, quite entranced with how these innately wise and beautiful plants grow. I associate these beings to my own inner growth, and as such, I have found joy.
The renovation was cathartic in many ways. I had to go through forty-six years of accumulated orts and bits and pieces from the lives of my Mommy and Daddy as we lived in this house. Plus, as in any house that has sheltered a number of transient friends and relatives, the stuff that strangers left in the guest room piled nearly to the ceiling. I had to close my eyes and discard the things I had grew up with, with much sadness. The smell of old paper and texture of the brown brittle documents and journals brought me to memories of hiding in the closets and feeling safe.
I found some very old photographs of my adoptive family, and of myself as I grew up and moved into motherhood. I also delighted in the youth of my Mommy and Daddy, in the times long past and marveled at my own memories of summers in Mindanao. I reproduced some of the photographs and will serve as a visual pathway of part of my life story, on a small door that will seem to push out from the floor. A tree made out of wire and the yarn I have been had spinning, bursts through this door, which symbolizes myself and how I have come to be where I am.
My work for this exhibit is a result of the recent experiences I have gone through, and like a strange plant, I have crossed through the door and entered another life, another family. But I thrived and bloomed and continue to exist where fate and Divine Wisdom has brought me. The handiwork of my emotional hand spinning has found its purpose at last, many years after I started it.

– Lia Torralba

Woman of the House: Josephine Turalba

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Born November 27, 1965. Lives and works in Manila, Philippines.
Josephine Turalba is an interdisciplinary artist who incorporates painting, photography, video, sound and installation to explore her subject matter. She received her MFA in New Media from Transart Institute at Universität Krems in Austria in 2009.

Josephine Turalba incorporates video, sculpture and sound to explore issues of violence, migration, struggle of wealth, power and identity. Her interdisciplinary projects take a visceral approach to the politics of violence focusing on the workings of personal trauma, depicting traces and spaces, a place where empathy translates into healing.She is in constant inquiry into human behavior and its context.  Working sometimes with land documents, Turalba explores both geography and time in her art and how those relate to her personal and collective identity. Her gigantic project Diwata is a multilayered investigation of the discord between the historical document and the actual experiences of the past time, employing palimpsest to transport viewers out of the realm of ordinary perception into a state of heightened awareness. 
Khaled Hafez, MFA

Source: www.josephineturalba.net

Woman of the House: Teta Tulay

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Core Member, The ANINO Shadowplay Collective
Teta’s devotion to lucifer led her to ANINO’s abode. Once there, she found herself quitting her 24/7 job as a professional animator and instead began exploring the myriad wonderful uses of the lowly masking tape, aside from entreating Elmo (Anino’s 17-year old ohp) to work when it refuses to light up. Inflicted with a two-tone tinnitus and an incurable optimism, she wishes to mentor as many minds open to the artform as she can and witness Anino’s world domination before she retires. These days she is preoccupied with the struggles in an unfairly forgetful world.
A cultural worker and educator who has received recognition from the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Gawad CCP Para sa Alternatibong Video at Pelikula, Animation Council of the Philippines, Inc. (ACPI), and the Philippine Board on Books for Young People (PBBY) for her works in animation and illustration. She is a member of Anino Shadowplay Collective, a group of artists devoted to the popularization of shadowplay in the country, and KASIBULAN (Kababaihan sa Sining at Bagong Sibol na Kamalayan), a women artists’ organization. She does multimedia work with award-winning activist group Southern Tagalog Exposure, and is the vice chair of Pinoy Animagination, a collective of independent animators who regularly facilitate workshops to propagate alternative and independent animation. She is currently extern moderator at the Ateneo De Manila Grade School, Fine Arts program coordinator at Kalayaan College, and lecturer at the University of the Philippines Film Institute.
She plays bass for the bands Republika de Lata and Inkantada.
Source: zoomInfo.com
Photo grabbed from Lea Lim

Woman of the House: Lia Torralba

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B: 1963, Manila, she studied Fine Arts, majoring in Painting at the College of the Holy Spirit, Mendiola, Manila. Her Interest in form and texture led her to choose Sculpture using clay as her primary medium of expression. She facilitates workshops on Creativity and taught briefly at St. Scholastica’s College. An advocate for Women’s Rights and Issues, she is also the current President of KASIBULAN, a collective of women artists.