In Between
Various Artist
Erika Mayo, Maverick Abac, Zabiel Nemenzo, Gelo Cinco, Joanolasco, Jericho Moral, Hannah Nantes
Erika Mayo, Maverick Abac, Zabiel Nemenzo, Gelo Cinco, Joanolasco, Jericho Moral, Hannah Nantes
07 - 09 November
Curated by
Julieanne Ng
07 - 09 November
In-Between
Mo_Space
We often see ourselves as vessels of experiences. A living and breathing cluster of atoms that walks, possessing a consciousness that is capable to visualize and bring form to new spaces–be it literal or figurative– from our experiences. When looked at from this perspective, part of being human is being liminal, being in between.
The show gathers eight artists whose works illuminate the different prisms of what it is to be liminal, while also having the agency to manipulate, blend, and blur spaces through one’s artistic practice. Through the works of Zabiel Nemenzo, Joanolasco, Erika Mayo, Hannah Nantes, Gelo Cinco, Jericho Moral, Julieanne Ng and Maverick Abac, one might encounter
Jericho Moral’s “The Uninvited Guests Said ‘They All Come to See Me.’” illustrates the tussle that transpires within oneself between wanting peace and quiet and being a good host to an unbidden guest. The anxiety of performing for a guest and the irony of doing it in one’s home, a supposed sanctuary, is also echoed in the work of Hannah Nantes. Centering on the performance of “dining”, Nantes’s assemblage induces an unease in its viewer as splat and stiles consume skin. Meanwhile, the elegance of a dining chair found in a quintessential Filipino home frames this theatre of discomfort.
Julieanne Ng takes inspiration from Erno Rubik’s book, Cubed: The Puzzle of Us All, which revolves around puzzles, and in particular, the famous Rubik’s cube. Ng introduces media that is rarely, if ever, considered to be art: fabric and candle. With the former used as a surface for the latter’s unpredictable marks, this deviation may be likened to a puzzle in that it asks for the artist to consider new perspectives and having the courage to lean into them.
In the wake of recent personal reflections, Joanna Nolasco brings forth visual representations of insights that reconcile seemingly opposing ideas which, in truth, fortify each other. By highlighting complementary colors (pink and green, orange and blue), Nolasco’s works depict growth and fluidity through motifs of plants and water, illustrating harmony within contrast. Zabiel Nemenzo, on the other hand, looks inward, examining the walls raised within a family system that does not welcome vulnerability. The quality of her chosen medium, being tactile and soft, juxtaposed against the weight of her message adds an interesting tension in her works, as if mirroring the artist’s own process of outgrowing old patterns in place for healthier ones.
Maverick Abac and Gelo Cinco both explore narrative through saturated palettes and playful compositions. While Abac attempts to narrate a linear timeline through layered wood and cutouts, his arresting colors and curious contours frames storytelling as a process that pulls from the reservoirs of one’s memory risking incompleteness. Cinco conjures scenes that are surreal and comical in their irreverence. His images come alive without the burden of conceptual rigidity, resulting in a world that warped, almost bizarre, but not entirely misaligned with our reality.
The experience of transition, of moving through new and uncertain terrains, becomes the focus for Erika Mayo. Inspired by her recent trip to the United States, Mayo reflects on what it means to be in transit, of disappearing and reappearing, much like the gray whales once thought extinct, only to resurface centuries later. Her works dwell in that nebulous space where transformation brews unseen. This we feel in moments of silence such that one encounters while inside the subway.
Humans have a tireless proclivity to define and categorize, but embracing ambiguity, allowing the tensions to exist as we acknowledge them, broadens and enriches our experience of life. As we inhabit our own in-betweenness, we shift thresholds. arrive at new understandings and see beyond the dissonance in our becoming.
Written by
J. Jose
About the Artist
About the Artists
Erika Mayo (b. 1993) is a full-timevisual artist whose work, primarily inoils and acrylics, explores thetension between vulnerability andstrength. Her paintings often reflecther deep inquiry into thecomplexities of identity and theinner struggles of being, using boldbrushstrokes and subtleundertones to create a compelling visual narrative.
Mayo has participated in group exhibitions in Bacolod, Iloilo, Cebu, Manila,Germany, and Korea. She was a featured artist at the orange projectshowcase at the 2020 art fair Philippines and most recently at the Visayasregional focus showcase in Art fair Philippines 2023.
Gelo Cinco (b. 1999) studies FineArts at the University of thePhilippines Diliman. With a stylethat melds photorealism andsurrealism, he paints multiversesusing photographs from his dailylife. His painterly approach tocollage involves rendering,recasting, and mutating theseImages through a process built on spontaneity.
Hannah Nantes is a visual artistcurrently based in Antipolo City.Much of her work approachcontemporary paradoxes andaccompanying anxieties as theyseep into the cloth of the mundane.
Through expressive figurativepaintings, prints, and assemblagepieces, her imagery pauses uponvignettes of commonplace absurdity as well as anxieties in a motif thatshe calls the “domestic grotesque.” She often incorporates found objects andrepurposed material to challenge the passivity in direct images and uses theirhistories, associations, and presence to negotiate with conflict, both personaland in society. She brings to attention the encompassing influence of hersuburban middle-class upbringing in her work, and upon which herexplorations on themes and materials are consciously indexed visually andpsychologically, questioning its comforts and lingering in the disquietcontained within cluttered rooms.
Jericho Moral is a visual artist fromMarikina City whose practice isrooted in worldbuilding andnarratives. He graduated from theUniversity of the Philippines with abachelor's degree in Fine Arts.His works have been exhibitedthrough CANVAS, Provenance, andvarious galleries in the country and abroad.
Joanolasco (Joanna Nolasco, b.2000) paints what is found outsideto relate it to what is felt on theinside. Objects of nature and whatis found in the urban landscape areused as visual metaphors to reflectthe state of her mind and being(emotions, dreams, beliefs, andinspirations). Painting is a mediumfor her small inner self to beexpressed outward, and for the large outside world to bring about a state ofintrospection and retrospection. Her main choice of medium is watercolor. In2024, Nolasco received her BFA in Painting from the University of thePhilippines, Diliman.
JULIEANNE NG(b.1994) is a visual artist, painter, and cultural worker from Manila, Philippines. She graduated Magna cum laude with a degree in Fine arts(Painting) at the University of the Phililppines-Diliman in 2017. She was asemi-finalist in the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence (MADE) competition in2018. Her solo shows include: Found Rejects (Pablo Gallery, 2019), More | Less(Gravity Art Space, 2024), and From Ash We Came (Art Cube Gallery, 2024). In2022, she finished her 2 month residency at Linangan artist residency in Alfonso, Cavite. Currently, she is actively participating in different group show and solos in the Philippines.
Her practice investigates the materiality, physical form, and historical and cultural connotations of objects. These objects (i.e.plastic cups, paper, fabric, incense) are often “overlooked”, taken from her surroundings. She grew up and currently live in an industrial compound in Valenzuela City, where her family commercially manufactures household plastic products. The sensorial experience of heavy machinery and assembly lines of identical products influence her work, where she focus on and
question the construction of self-identity and art-making. Taking the inherent properties of these objects, she translate visual and performative form into patterns as a reflection on repetition and ideas of utility. These patterns express the macrocosm of production and transform in to the language that bridges the material and natural world, machine and man. She respond to the monotony of mass production with her own patient and mindful process, no less intense yet meditatively repetitive. These things that are overlooked transcend their origin into something worthwhile.
Maverick Abac (b. 1999) is a visualartist based in Quezon City. Hestudied Fine Arts at the University ofthe Philippines Diliman. He hasexhibited in Manila, Thailand, andNew York.His practice explores digitalmanipulation of photographs todevice paintings and collages onvarious media.
To him, memory is not a perfect recording, but rather areconstruction of fragments influenced by various factors. He thenintentionally alters and distorts his personal documented moments throughdigital and analog processes of composition-making to reflect the fragility ofhis memory.
Zabiel Nemenzo (B. 1999) is anemerging artist born in BacolodCity, Negros Occidental. Shegraduated Senior Highschool with amajor in the Arts & Design Track.During the pandemic, whichbecame her turning point, she fullyembraced her calling in art bycollaborating with filmmakers andartists under ViVa Excon 2020-2021.She recently had her first art residency at Linangan Art Residency in Cavite,Philippines for two months from January 10, 2025 – March 10, 2025 under theBatch Pulô.
Her work fuses acrylics, pen and ink, charcoal, and watercolor. However duringquarantine she developed an interest in embroidery. The process of stitchingreminded Zabiel of medical sutures and thread which for her holds asignificant meaning of life because of her heart surgery. Zabiel's art delves intothe nuances of heritage, the weight of inequality, and the intimacy of personalstruggles, with each piece serving as a catalyst for dialogue andtransformative reflection.
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
Erika Mayo (b. 1993) is a full-timevisual artist whose work, primarily inoils and acrylics, explores thetension between vulnerability andstrength. Her paintings often reflecther deep inquiry into thecomplexities of identity and theinner struggles of being, using boldbrushstrokes and subtleundertones to create a compelling visual narrative.
Mayo has participated in group exhibitions in Bacolod, Iloilo, Cebu, Manila,Germany, and Korea. She was a featured artist at the orange projectshowcase at the 2020 art fair Philippines and most recently at the Visayasregional focus showcase in Art fair Philippines 2023.
Gelo Cinco (b. 1999) studies FineArts at the University of thePhilippines Diliman. With a stylethat melds photorealism andsurrealism, he paints multiversesusing photographs from his dailylife. His painterly approach tocollage involves rendering,recasting, and mutating theseImages through a process built on spontaneity.
Hannah Nantes is a visual artistcurrently based in Antipolo City.Much of her work approachcontemporary paradoxes andaccompanying anxieties as theyseep into the cloth of the mundane.
Through expressive figurativepaintings, prints, and assemblagepieces, her imagery pauses uponvignettes of commonplace absurdity as well as anxieties in a motif thatshe calls the “domestic grotesque.” She often incorporates found objects andrepurposed material to challenge the passivity in direct images and uses theirhistories, associations, and presence to negotiate with conflict, both personaland in society. She brings to attention the encompassing influence of hersuburban middle-class upbringing in her work, and upon which herexplorations on themes and materials are consciously indexed visually andpsychologically, questioning its comforts and lingering in the disquietcontained within cluttered rooms.
Jericho Moral is a visual artist fromMarikina City whose practice isrooted in worldbuilding andnarratives. He graduated from theUniversity of the Philippines with abachelor's degree in Fine Arts.His works have been exhibitedthrough CANVAS, Provenance, andvarious galleries in the country and abroad.
Joanolasco (Joanna Nolasco, b.2000) paints what is found outsideto relate it to what is felt on theinside. Objects of nature and whatis found in the urban landscape areused as visual metaphors to reflectthe state of her mind and being(emotions, dreams, beliefs, andinspirations). Painting is a mediumfor her small inner self to beexpressed outward, and for the large outside world to bring about a state ofintrospection and retrospection. Her main choice of medium is watercolor. In2024, Nolasco received her BFA in Painting from the University of thePhilippines, Diliman.
JULIEANNE NG(b.1994) is a visual artist, painter, and cultural worker from Manila, Philippines. She graduated Magna cum laude with a degree in Fine arts(Painting) at the University of the Phililppines-Diliman in 2017. She was asemi-finalist in the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence (MADE) competition in2018. Her solo shows include: Found Rejects (Pablo Gallery, 2019), More | Less(Gravity Art Space, 2024), and From Ash We Came (Art Cube Gallery, 2024). In2022, she finished her 2 month residency at Linangan artist residency in Alfonso, Cavite. Currently, she is actively participating in different group show and solos in the Philippines.
Her practice investigates the materiality, physical form, and historical and cultural connotations of objects. These objects (i.e.plastic cups, paper, fabric, incense) are often “overlooked”, taken from her surroundings. She grew up and currently live in an industrial compound in Valenzuela City, where her family commercially manufactures household plastic products. The sensorial experience of heavy machinery and assembly lines of identical products influence her work, where she focus on and
question the construction of self-identity and art-making. Taking the inherent properties of these objects, she translate visual and performative form into patterns as a reflection on repetition and ideas of utility. These patterns express the macrocosm of production and transform in to the language that bridges the material and natural world, machine and man. She respond to the monotony of mass production with her own patient and mindful process, no less intense yet meditatively repetitive. These things that are overlooked transcend their origin into something worthwhile.
Maverick Abac (b. 1999) is a visualartist based in Quezon City. Hestudied Fine Arts at the University ofthe Philippines Diliman. He hasexhibited in Manila, Thailand, andNew York.His practice explores digitalmanipulation of photographs todevice paintings and collages onvarious media.
To him, memory is not a perfect recording, but rather areconstruction of fragments influenced by various factors. He thenintentionally alters and distorts his personal documented moments throughdigital and analog processes of composition-making to reflect the fragility ofhis memory.
Zabiel Nemenzo (B. 1999) is anemerging artist born in BacolodCity, Negros Occidental. Shegraduated Senior Highschool with amajor in the Arts & Design Track.During the pandemic, whichbecame her turning point, she fullyembraced her calling in art bycollaborating with filmmakers andartists under ViVa Excon 2020-2021.She recently had her first art residency at Linangan Art Residency in Cavite,Philippines for two months from January 10, 2025 – March 10, 2025 under theBatch Pulô.
Her work fuses acrylics, pen and ink, charcoal, and watercolor. However duringquarantine she developed an interest in embroidery. The process of stitchingreminded Zabiel of medical sutures and thread which for her holds asignificant meaning of life because of her heart surgery. Zabiel's art delves intothe nuances of heritage, the weight of inequality, and the intimacy of personalstruggles, with each piece serving as a catalyst for dialogue andtransformative reflection.
Share