ABOUT THE WORK

Geraldine Javier’s mixed media piece titled Sto. Nino reimagines and recontextualizes the traditional image of the child Jesus in order to reflect the ever-evolving state of society and its practices. Religious art is inherently governed by its strict use of symbols and imagery in order to denote different facets of its faith. Its visual elements are often dictated by hermeneutic discourse, effectively producing a strict canon of venerated objects. Yet, aside from the familiar image of the child Jesus, Javier’s piece does not contain any traditionally Christian or Catholic images. In it, the titular Sto. Nino is placed atop of a winding tree branch, with the child Jesus surrounded by different kinds of animals and creatures. Though unorthodox in its presentation, Javier’s piece can be seen as an exploration of the kind of religious art that blossomed in the previously colonized world. Javier’s own reimagining is no different from the uniquely Filipino santos that were produced as a result of combining Western Christianity and folk aesthetics. Javier’s work simply modernized this concept as a way of understanding the paradoxical nature of culture and society itself— effectively reimagining the divine as not something distant and foreign, but something that animates every nook and cranny of the natural world. The works of Geraldine Javier are often seen as both aesthetic and intellectual masterpieces. Her synthesis of both material and metaphorical content into her work is often attributed to the formal training she received from Roberto Chabet, the Father of Philippine Conceptual Art, when she was a student at the University of the Philippines’ College of Fine Arts. Thus, her works are often described as art that prioritizesintellectual and genuine engagement over immediate emotional response.