Provenance: Provenance: Pinto Art Museum, Antipolo City

ABOUT THE WORK

The artistic practice of visual artist Kawayan de Guia is heavily informed by postmodern and contemporary analyses of current Filipino society and traditional precolonial and colonial culture. His interest in the intersections between modern, traditional, and indigenous cultures can be traced to his own personal experiences, particularly with his family members who are staunch advocates of the arts and culture scene in their hometown of Baguio. Kawayan has since participated in numerous arts advocacy projects such as the AX(iS) art project that promotes art and artistic practices that do not conform to the usual institutional norms. A dominant aspect in de Guia’s works is his use of juxtaposition and satire in order to posit contemporary critiques in the form of a familiar and humorous visual language. He does this by synthesizing both traditional and modern visual devices within his works. This particular work is the concluding piece to de Guia’s Ethics of Mysticism series. Ethics of Mysticism 4/4: Absence features a series of subjects and images seemingly arranged in an institutional setting. The images are diverse, ranging from an expressive rendering of the famous Aphrodite of Knidos sculpture, a familiar painting of a local rural scene, a set of bululs, a poignant rendition of an indigenous woman from the Cordillera region, and other items and subjects. The piece purportedly asks a multitude of questions, such as what beauty and what art’s role is in a globalized and westernized society. De Guia’s tableaux-like work is both humorous and serious as it attempts to contribute to a variety of essential questions that have probed the very core of human expression since the beginning.