I’m a Willing Hostage of Christmas
Geraldine Javier
06 November – 05 December 2010
Curated by
06 November – 05 December 2010
Anticipating the yuletide rush of 2010, painter Geraldine Javier forays into textile art installation at The Project Room, MO_Space’s incubator and launch pad for experimental or new works.
Entitled I’m a Willing Hostage of Christmas, Javier’s work is comprised of a used sofa fenced in with Christmas lights covered in tatting lace. The enclosed subject and space twines both engagement and emotion: intersecting between the penal and the personal.
This space of captivity, as Javier asserts, is not about the commercialization of Christmas. While the title and the jail-like web of lights connotes being inextricably caught up in the season and the festivities, the sofa inside stands as a symbol of what endures or stays, long after the rush has passed. It is an intentional enclosure for the intangible and non-saleable aspects of the season: recapturing home, memories, and wonder at simple things.
This is a rarity when the season abounds with its diverse share of crass commercialism and senseless sparkle, cynics and naysayers, scrooges and grinches. Happiness may sometimes be contrived; the artist posits that it can also be created and protected. When was the last time you really sat down, whether in solitude or with loved ones, to think about what matters beyond the material? To be captive, or to be captivated? Javier bravely chooses hope.
About the Artist
About the Artists
Geraldine Javier (b. 1970, Philippines) lives and work in the Philippines. Javier has held many solo and group exhibitions in her home country since 1995, and since 2004, she has been exhibiting her works internationally. She is recognized as one of the most celebrated Southeast Asian artists both in the academic and art fields. Her works revolve around the universal world of spirituality rather than concentrating on a specific religion. Javier’s interests root from the artist’s personal history of having lived her whole life struggling with the catholic culture in the Philippines, and are manifested through the unique region-specificity of Southeast Asia, in which the influx of Western culture has been naturalized. In other words, Javier goes beyond the logic behind religion, to pursue fundamental values that can be collectively embraced.
Javier was one of the artists who received the Thirteen Artists Award of Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2003.
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
Geraldine Javier (b. 1970, Philippines) lives and work in the Philippines. Javier has held many solo and group exhibitions in her home country since 1995, and since 2004, she has been exhibiting her works internationally. She is recognized as one of the most celebrated Southeast Asian artists both in the academic and art fields. Her works revolve around the universal world of spirituality rather than concentrating on a specific religion. Javier’s interests root from the artist’s personal history of having lived her whole life struggling with the catholic culture in the Philippines, and are manifested through the unique region-specificity of Southeast Asia, in which the influx of Western culture has been naturalized. In other words, Javier goes beyond the logic behind religion, to pursue fundamental values that can be collectively embraced.
Javier was one of the artists who received the Thirteen Artists Award of Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2003.
Related Exhibitions
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