Wish You Were Here: a curatorial project by Nicole Tee

In collaboration with West Gallery Shop

A curatorial project by Nicole Tee

Jan Balquin, Julia Barrameda, Nice Buenaventura, Sam Bumanlag, Zean Cabangis, Pin Calacal, Mariano Ching, Dina Gadia, Kitty Kaburo, Celine Lee, Lou Lim, Audrey Lukban, Efren Madlangsakay, Jr., Raffy T. Napay, Elaine Navas, Henrielle Baltazar Pagkaliwangan, Bryan Pollero, Julio San Jose, Eunice Sanchez, Carina Santos, Isabel Santos, Luis Antonio Santos, Jel Suarez, Nicole Tee, Miguel Lorenzo Uy, Liv Vinluan, Jemima Yabes, MM Yu

Joining together 28 artists from different generations, Wish You Were Here is a curatorial project initiated by artist Nicole Tee. The project is rooted in Tee’s years-long practice of exchanging postcards with her friends, especially those who lived abroad or outside the metropolis. Unable to see these friends regularly, Tee stayed connected with them through sending postcards — to wish them well during special occasions or to just say hi during “no-occasion days” — often without alerting in advance, replacing anticipation with the delight of surprise.

In the height of its popularity, sending postcards was a convenient and cost effective way of keeping in touch with friends and family, especially those who lived far away. When on holidays, it was also a small and easy way to let others know you were thinking of them. Framed within a standard postcard size (most often 4 inches tall and 6 inches wide), these small tokens contained a multitude of worlds on one side, coupled with a personalised message, short and sweet. These messages often contain poetic turns of phrases imposed by the brevity required by the size, with enough room to be left for the address so the message gets to where it needs to go. Regardless of what is enclosed within these small confines of space, the pervasive message of these cards are: “I wish you were here.”

Today, during the age of modern communication where it’s all too easy to send a quick message or digital greeting, these postcards that used to be commonplace are now so precious, tethers of connections that are set apart from typical messages. Postcards both transport you to where the other person is or wants to be, but also sends you feelings of home along with it.

For Wish You Were Here, the 28 participating artists were asked to depict different “-scapes”, which is the common pictorial subject of the medium. Across the gallery, you are transported from one artist’s inner world to another, distilling their art onto a small canvas and bringing you to different worlds. These tiny images resist loudness and largeness: proof that magic can exist in smallness, that sometimes, these specific forms of magic — strengthened by the power of connection — can only come across in these small packages.

Wish You Were Here was created in collaboration with West Gallery Shop. It was an idea Tee bounced around with friend and artist Henrielle Pagkaliwangan a couple of years ago before being shelved until it found the perfect home. The postcards can be purchased on their own as pieces, or as facsimiles to be kept or shared.