What is the difference when one says they are “confronting their demons,” as opposed to confronting themselves?

In the small, sleepy town in Italy, youths rebel against tradition and rurality but end up repressed and full of resentment. Bells ring from a church tower submerged in the lake, and from the deep, a doppleganger surfaces: a total opposite of the person on land. This is the premise of Curon, a television series which aired in 2020. 

Jumping off from the plots of classical horror and thriller movies, Audrey Lukban engages with a group of paintings that are all self-portraits. Uncomfortable angles mingle with a softness in strokes and choices of colour. There are no drastic movements, only moments caught in an intimate pause. Maturity is rife all over the canvases as young painters tend to just explore through painting. Here we are confronted by an exploration of an exploration—an attempt to answer with a question. 

Lukban perhaps unknowingly progresses from a lineage of the Asian aesthetic through the extreme compositions and framing utilised in the works. One might say it is impressionistic in the severity of delineation between stairs, bed frames, curtains, and windows, but then again, where did the Impressionists steal this technique but from the souvenir Ukiyo-E prints brought back to the West some hundred years ago.

As one can observe, one of the same two figures appear see-through, ghostly in a manner. Either is it the self that is slowly fading or the other that ever-so-slightly lingers around, the feeling of someone watching from behind. Perhaps this transparency is telling us that it’s not that complicated, that there is nothing to overthink?

What is most appealing in these self-portraits is its manifestation of Lukban as a Filipino painter. Not merely in the foliage or flora depicted, but rather in its exposition of horror vacui. This “fear of empty spaces” has been cited by Dr. Patrick Flores as one of the key aesthetics in the Philippine context. The presence of two figures, two selves within the canvas fills it with a self-judgement that could stem from a never-ending criticism of the self: an unassuming horror vacui. It promises to be an empty space that is difficult to fill. Now more than ever are people struggling with this consuming emptiness. On a side note, “A Spotlight from the Hopper Window” brings to mind the sculpture “Bathing Lady” by Ildefonso Marcelo, one of the three stone sculptures that have defined the entrance to UP Diliman for more than fifty years. 

The rise and rise of social media and related technology seems to have allowed a strange evolution to these questions as the use of alter egos and online personas have become the norm in identity formation. It is unacceptable to be no one, to not have an online presence. Technology and marketing of the last decade has delivered on its promise of 24/7 connectivity. Even the peak of Mount Everest has a wi-fi signal (although certain pockets of the city are frustratingly deadzoned). We are witnessing a generation where social media is life, a real person almost does not matter. Filters have replaced Photoshop in achieving the best that you can be, although claiming to act as an inspiration, hope for the average person IRL (internet code for ‘in real life’). Make-up Transformations and their tutorials allow anyone with time and access to be whoever they want to be without going under the knife—although mostly online. In “The Match Game,” an array of cabinets open and closed somehow mimics a memory game: pairing who you are with how you want to be seen takes several tries… “where did I last see myself?” Presenting oneself online with “carefully selected” selfies or a curated feed of interests, while at the same time being informed by an endless stream of data and imagery from that same online, makes you wonder who really is the influencer and who is the influenced.

As the TV series progresses, the original self and the doppelganger engage in a struggle: only one must remain. Either one is neither the other, aside from looks, as the double is everything the original decided not to be, although always wanted to become. For some, the original gives up easily, an expected submissiveness to the confident duplicate. As inspired by the classical, Lukban taps into a modern terror – one that awaits, treading on the progressing notion of reality in the mind, an unsettling silent tension. It bides its time to transcend into flesh: into a docile body.