Investigatory Projects
Gale Encarnacion, Kitty Kaburo, Nicole Tee
16 February – 17 March 2019
Curated by
Christina Quisumbing Ramilo
16 February – 17 March 2019
We have often come to perceive the world and its things as inert and distinct. Barring natural disasters, the plethora of man-made constructions and natural formations have lent the analog world a sense of solidity—far removed from the abstract networks, systems, and transactions that seemingly operate beyond our control. Indeed, for centuries we have fashioned things from the earth for our needs. And the products of our efforts (the artifacts, tools, structures, products) physically surround us in our every waking day. They mediate our appearances, our interactions, and our relations. Yet they remain apart from us, stodgy and unyielding. Mere matter to be used, consumed, and in the end, discarded.
This distinction is brought to question in Investigatory Projects, featuring the works of artists Gale Encarnacion, Kitty Kaburo, and Nicole Tee. The exhibition invites a playful reckoning of things metamorphosed, of the familiar made strange. This is achieved through a diverse plethora of artistic processes: burning, melting, embroidering, painting, filming, photographing, floating, decaying. Folded cloth is cast into mountainous landscapes hearkening to geologic time. The thawing of frozen plastic detritus, household chemicals, and paint brings rapid climatological changes to fore. Food is decayed beyond human edibility, its chemical breakdown hastened by the growth of molds. All are documented via recording technologies that transcend the capabilities of our senses and time-bound bodies. As adjustments are made in our temporal and spatial registers, we find inertness give way to state change. All that is solid shifts, melts, disintegrates, folds, and flows.
The artists’ inquiry into materiality resonates with current anthropological concerns on ecology and the environment, of the non-human actors of animals, plants, places, objects, and artifacts. In a similar vein, these artistic investigations seemingly decenter the anthropological gaze. Yet the act of inquiry, of reflection and observation, remains a uniquely human endeavor. The interactions of things extend to our own involvement in the world, and in return, of the world’s involvement with us. How have we changed the world and how has it changed us?
Indeed, it ill behooves us to be reminded that we are more porous than we lead ourselves to believe.
About the Artist
About the Artists
Kitty Kaburo (b. 1987) is a Filipino artist of Korean descent. She works with various mediums, incorporating each of their peculiar properties to simulate the transformation and effects of time, the elements and human activity on landscapes. She graduated from the University of Philippines’ College of Fine Arts in 2015, receiving an Outstanding Thesis award. Her works have been exhibited in various group shows around Metro Manila.
Gale Encarnacion’s work is characterized by a scathing awareness of impermanence. Her intermedia pieces call attention to the frailty of the human body, as she makes use of ubiquitous / ordinary materials such as bread, salt dough, and bubble gum. Gleaning themes and subject matter from the organic, the scientific, and the fleeting, she paints and sculpts biological entities—insects, body parts, roadkill—and uses them in narratives that outline the persistence of time. Her work is the result of a fascination with our flesh and breath and spit and the accompanying guarantee that eventually we all will be gone.
Nicole Tee (b. 1993) is a visual artist from Manila, Philippines. Her practice explores forms and textures anchored on domestic processes, with themes revolving around facets of memory, place, and the home. She utilizes various media such as textile, thread, flora, collage, oil painting, and multimedia in her works. Of late, her preference has been the use of fabric as subject matter and material. Tee is attracted both to its formal attributes and to the slow, repetitive gestures that the manipulation of fabric entails.
Tee graduated with a BFA in Painting from the University of the Philippines in 2016. She received the Department of Studio Arts Outstanding Thesis Award. She was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards (2017) and the Sanag: UP Art Prize (2023). She has been participating in various group shows around Metro Manila, and has mounted solo exhibitions at Artinformal, Blanc Gallery, Finale Art File, Tin-Aw Art Gallery, Underground Gallery, and West Gallery.
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
Kitty Kaburo (b. 1987) is a Filipino artist of Korean descent. She works with various mediums, incorporating each of their peculiar properties to simulate the transformation and effects of time, the elements and human activity on landscapes. She graduated from the University of Philippines’ College of Fine Arts in 2015, receiving an Outstanding Thesis award. Her works have been exhibited in various group shows around Metro Manila.
Gale Encarnacion’s work is characterized by a scathing awareness of impermanence. Her intermedia pieces call attention to the frailty of the human body, as she makes use of ubiquitous / ordinary materials such as bread, salt dough, and bubble gum. Gleaning themes and subject matter from the organic, the scientific, and the fleeting, she paints and sculpts biological entities—insects, body parts, roadkill—and uses them in narratives that outline the persistence of time. Her work is the result of a fascination with our flesh and breath and spit and the accompanying guarantee that eventually we all will be gone.
Nicole Tee (b. 1993) is a visual artist from Manila, Philippines. Her practice explores forms and textures anchored on domestic processes, with themes revolving around facets of memory, place, and the home. She utilizes various media such as textile, thread, flora, collage, oil painting, and multimedia in her works. Of late, her preference has been the use of fabric as subject matter and material. Tee is attracted both to its formal attributes and to the slow, repetitive gestures that the manipulation of fabric entails.
Tee graduated with a BFA in Painting from the University of the Philippines in 2016. She received the Department of Studio Arts Outstanding Thesis Award. She was shortlisted for the Ateneo Art Awards (2017) and the Sanag: UP Art Prize (2023). She has been participating in various group shows around Metro Manila, and has mounted solo exhibitions at Artinformal, Blanc Gallery, Finale Art File, Tin-Aw Art Gallery, Underground Gallery, and West Gallery.
Related Exhibitions
Share