7642nd Island

This installation was commissioned by Art House with the assistance of the British Council Manila. This work is conceptualized as prompted by the curatorial notes of LAKBAY: Voyages into the Absolute with Nena Saguil by curator Marika Constantino. Reproduced below are his musings about the work.

Nena Saguil tried to find connections to the universe and the spiritual. As an artist, I try to find meaning and connection to my own personal history on how the home, the past, and childhood experiences impact the way I look at life now, and the way to understand how I have become the better version of myself as a human being through my craft. This I think is almost synonymous to understanding the universe and the spiritual.

With these investigations I realized that Filipinos in the diaspora inhabit an invisible virtual space which I refer to as a digital archipelago. A lot of us reside in imaginary time and spatial zones; where here and there could conveniently collide through the communication lines on the internet via online and video calls, where we pay for our families’ bills through wire, and where we fill the gaps of creating memories with endless exchange of intangible voice memos and pictures popping out of our screens. We live on almost non-physical spaces somewhere in the clouds, whilst our feet lie flat in the ground. I feel that the articulation of that reality paints a poetic imagery which is very real in the lived experiences of every Filipino overseas. For me, this area is the latest addition to the 7,641 islands that comprise the Philippine archipelago.

As a young boy who grew up in Tayabas, Quezon, a rural area in the Philippines, I have always been enamored by how farmers would lay all their rice harvests like carpets on the roads called binilad na palayduring summer. This is to make sure that the fruit of their labor would turn into gold, so to speak, when its fully dried-up and ready for milling. In my young mind they felt like marked territories. During those days, whenever we would play habulan outside, we would run around its peripheries. No one was allowed to step on that golden patch of rice spread on the ground; not even on a single grain. However, with climate change bringing in unpredictable weather, and perhaps even better technologies, this practice is quickly vanishing.

Using this childhood anecdote as the creative trigger of physicalizing an invisible place such as the digital archipelago, I imagined an installation where people could access peripheries, go around, or gain a better view of it from a distance. The restriction to physically step into that world is a fitting metaphor to my childhood experience of these golden binilad na palay vis-a-vis as a diasporic Filipino who constantly visits the motherland through the “non-place” place which is the internet.

Grounding and abstracting that idea to my personal experience I envisioned these rows and piles of boxes (mimicking miniature balikbayan boxes) with colorfully wrapped objects inside. Akin to surprising loved ones with presents contained in balikbayan boxes, while packaging the idea of home and comfort. Individually, I have conceived these wrapped gifts as buildings, whereas the boxes are land. Seen together, they are like mini pixels clustered together and to form edgy, grid-like islands to represent imaginary time zones and space.

Similar to Nena Saguil’s iconic dots and circles, they collectively compose a bigger abstracted picture. The installation was created through the repetitive accumulation of granular pieces into units and clusters assembling its own version of the universe, rendered in an abstracted form. The material choices relate to my story of home, from then to now. Stitching a seemingly complex visual tapestry of vibrant patterns, shapes, and forms. I wish to celebrate the salient essence of Nena Saguil’s art that resonate with me through my own creative practice coupled with my learnings and experiences.