Provenance: Provenance: Private Collection, Quezon City

ABOUT THE WORK

Through a clever interplay of symbols, images, and ideas, contemporary artist Joven Mansit manages to achieve a level of discourse that only a few artists, scholars, and intellectuals have achieved. By utilizing genre conventions often ascribed to comedy such as satire, parody, and lampoon, Mansit transforms relatively heavy subject matters into a much more accessible form. This act of grounding invites responsibly informed discourse that is not weighed down by the plight of its actuality or forced into obscurity by its trivial subject-matter. In this work, one is immediately drawn to the comically framed details of the piece. Yet its allure does not stop there. The dissonance that stems from the juxtaposition of disparate elements evokes a pedagogy that leads the viewer to seek out critical discourse.