Woman of the House: Josephine Turalba

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 Her gigantic project Diwata is a multilayered investigation of the discord between the historical document and the actual experiences of the past time, employing palimpsest to transport viewers out of the realm of ordinary perception into a state of heightened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

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

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.

Woman of the House: Mimi Tecson

Mimi Tecson’s art focuses on the usage of various objects as a means of recollecting and representing memories. A strong emotional connection to objects and its sentimentality provide the foundation for her work. Tecson’s visual language encompasses both contemporary and traditional techniques with strong leaning towards arts and crafts; her process of composing found objects mirrors the reconstruction and revisualization of memories and experiences. The bricolage (the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things which happen to be available) style in her work is applied to her interpretation of the diverse facets of human emotions, sense of history and empowerment. Tecson often parallels this theme with her interest in popular culture, does giving her work a sense of connection between her past and the present. Tecson earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the College of the Holy Spirit and has held various group exhibitions in the Metro.

 

Photo grabbed from Mik Laborde

Woman of the House: Aj Tolentino

Graduated at Philippine Women’s University, a member of Tutok Art Core, Inc. an initiative of visual artists focused on art and advocacy. She also plays percussion for the band Earthfishfish.

Woman of the House: Bru Sim

Bru is one-half of the Electrolychee Graphic Design Studio.

She is a self-taught artist who crafts works with ink, paint, paper, clay, needlework and encaustic.

Photo grabbed from miss-match.com.ph

Woman of the House: Dang Sering

Dang Sering graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Philippines in 2004. She returned to her art practice in 2009, exhibiting in group shows at various galleries in Metro Manila. She was a fellow at the Benguet Artist Summit in 2012.

Her works, ranging from ink drawings, painted photographs in lightboxes, to rubber prints, present explorations and expressions of the inner life. Geography and our response to urban living is also present in her work. Artistic practice is a means to get out of her comfort zone to follow her curiosity and take risks.

Dang continues to work as a freelance graphic designer and copywriter for creative entrepreneurs, start-up organizations, and artists. She currently resides in Katipunan, Quezon City.

Woman of the House: Ling Quisumbing Ramilo

Tahanan ni Ling

by Emilio Ozaeta
Published in artinsitemagazine.com

As you purposefully pack your possessions you often become aware that these things that you hold in your hands are the same things that become gateways to memories often joyful, poignant or distressing.

Then you realize that not only what you hold in your hands but also everything else around you transforms themselves into similar portals. This door that saw many hellos and goodbyes, that window that saw you looking wistfully through the grilled windows on a rainy afternoon, that stairway where little feet scampered up and down merrily or stomped in a rage, these same remnants of yourself are hard to part with because they now are you. Your house has become your life.

For Ling Quisumbing Ramilo, re-rooting herself after more than twenty years in New York City has been a similar journey. Returning to settle once more in her family compound in Quezon City and re-weave the threads of her history gave her the impetus to seize these same threads and create anew.

Ling left the Philippines in 1985 soon after she graduated from the University of the Philippines with a degree in visual communications to take up graduate studies in Studio Art and Art Education at New York University. Immersing herself in her new life, she allowed herself to evolve artistically through group and solo exhibitions in New York, Canada and the Philippines.

Then she decided to come back.

Full story HERE.

Woman of the House: Alma Quinto

 

A feminist activist involved in many advocacy works using art as a medium, as a visual artist, she engages marginalized women and children in her projects as collaborators and co-creators, expanding the visual experience of the participants to create a collective work that challenges the traditional as well as the patriarchal way of making art. Her projects, mostly labor-intensive art forms using foam, fabrics and needlework, represent the sexually abused children in an empowered position as can be experienced in her tapestry works and soft sculptures.

Her “Soft Dreams and Bed Stories” project was exhibited at the 8th Havana Bienale in Cuba in 2003 and was later selected for an exhibition at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Norway in 2004 together with 25 other works selected from the Havana Bienale. She again represented the Philippines in the 2nd Yokohama Triennale in Japan with her “Ayayam”, a project that involves not only women from KASIBULAN and abused children from the Philippines but Japanese women artists and advocacy workers as well.

She was president of KASIBULAN (Kababaihan sa Sining at Bagong Sibol na Kamalayan or Women in Art and Emerging Consciousness), a collective of women artists active in advocating women’s empowerment through the arts.

As an art educator, she headed the Philippine Art Educators Association (PAEA) which is committed to promote an art education all over the Philippines grounded on strong Philippine art perspective. She has developed modules and conducted numerous art workshops in different schools, museums, alternative spaces and centers for marginalized children. Since 1995, she has been conducting arts for healing workshop for the young female survivors – victims of sexual abuse at CRIBS Philippines.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Philippine Studies and took up masteral units in Art Studies major in Art History and undergrad units in Studio Arts at the University of the Philippines in Diliman.

Source: http://arthoc.org.ph/trauma-interrupted/alma/alma_about.html
Photo by Rica Estrada

Woman of the House: Eden Ocampo

Studied Fine Arts in Painting at College of the Holy Spirit and had her first solo exhibition of abstract paintings in 1989 as her school thesis entitled “Formlessness.” It was an execution of exuberant and scintillating brushstrokes and paint drops of contrasting and vibrant colors applied side-by-side, mostly were done on square-shaped canvas. Right after the 1986 Edsa Revolution, she joined many art group exhibitions commemorating the spirit of ‘People’s Power’ and became a member of Group 10, a group of fine art students that were active in holding art exhibit of heterogeneous artworks from late ’80s to early ’90s.

She believes that if you are gifted with creative talent you can experiment and manipulate whatever medium you use, and it will always wind-up into manifestation of passion and free spirit.