Two exhibitions opening simultaneously at MO_Space, Pardo de Leon’s Monsoon Journal and Mawen Ong’s Against Blankness, offer parallel perspectives on the theme of memory. In most instances, remembering is always seen as a kind of strength and virtue, while forgetting is normally cast as a form of weakness and failure. This rigid dichotomy has formed the basis of dominant discourses on the culture of memory. However, it is also just as necessary to understand that some things must be forgotten in order for other things to come to mind.

In Monsoon Journal, Pardo de Leon records the passing of time, keeping track of its traces through paintings and objects. Her works are metaphorical chronicles of her life in Baguio, where she has relocated with her husband after they decided to leave Manila in 2010. Together, they literally worked the land to clear the space and build their home, much like the early settlers before them. One set of paintings tells the story of a single room shack, which they lived in for a period of over two years while they were constructing their house. For a bit of privacy and warmth, they used her canvases as provisional curtains and insulation for their roof and walls. The canvases themselves are included in the exhibition, with all their water and earth stains and the perilous marks of life in the wild.

A second set of works registers the cycles of nature and the changing of the seasons. In a series of paintings, she captures the shifting colors of her ten favorite trees in the forest, applying the colors on the canvas as they appeared on the tree canopy over time. Complementing these paintings are several triangles made from leftover wood from the construction, which she scattered in batches all around the forest in the hope that moss will grow and cover them. After two monsoons, only a few triangles from the first batch survived; most of them were completely disintegrated under a blanket of soil and fallen leaves. Succeeding batches were more intact and some actually grew moss; however, after the wet season, the moss also withered and dried.

Mawen Ong likewise grounds her exhibition on the act of journal-writing. She has kept the practice for many years as a way to note down the significant events in her life as well as her innermost thoughts, feelings, and dreams. In Against Blankness, she scanned the pages from her diaries and layered the images until they became nearly indecipherable. While the reader can still make out fragments of words and sentences, the density of the layers creates a dark and impenetrable veil that will forever shroud the diary’s secret world. The new works recall her previous installation of letters from various discarded signages presented in one huge heap. In both cases, she deliberately imparts disorder, confusion, and a refusal to be read.

Accompanying the photographs is a small glass vitrine containing a stack of her old diaries spread open to reveal their empty pages. Arranged according to the form of a ziggurat, the work memorializes the days that have been missed and forgotten as much as it venerates the void and meaninglessness. While she somehow regrets not being able to record everything in writing, the work can also be seen positively as a kind of clean slate on which new memories can be made. The exhibition may be titled Against Blankness, but it does not strictly imply that it is in direct opposition to forgetting.

These two exhibitions are motivated partially on the desire to remember but they are also acts of letting go. By allowing nature to take its own course or by acknowledging the fact that we are unable to remember everything that has happened, we relinquish control and release ourselves from our own attachments. Amnesia and amnesty are, after all, etymologically related. Memory may have its own merits, but forgetting is of equal value in the ongoing life of the present.

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