30.5 x 30.5 cm
There is a significant attention by artists to explore the possibilities in textile art and to experiment whether through material manipulation or assigning meaning. This is also emphasized in an article on the importance of textiles in contemporary thought by Buchmann and Frank, which states that textile art has impact in current art-making because it has “richly relational mediality, as well as charged connotations with craft, skill, and knowledge, with the collective and the individual.” Consequently, artists who explore this tactile material are given space to focus on its transmedial potential, as in translating from one medium to another. For this exhibition, Mimi Tecson and Wesley Valenzuela created new works within this multimodality by utilizing their already developed maximalist aesthetics on assemblage, collage, printmaking, and graphic design and transposing these techniques to fabric manipulation, intricate sewing, and dynamic silkscreen printing.
The Fabric of Being as a presentation of fiber art likewise hinges on the material as a subjective vessel for both the physical and metaphorical textures of life. Each stitch, print, and textile fragment serves as a testament to the layered, interconnected experiences that are weaved together forming the complex fabric of human identity. The two artists, because of their immersion to popular culture and the distinct environs of Manila City, are able to gather engaging seams and strands of memory, personhood, time, and connection through a strata of stories and histories. Tecson temporarily abandons her comfort zone by stitching, to capture moments not by object representation but through the slow and repetitive act of embroidery, as a way of holding onto memories and giving them permanence. Family members are tenderly traced with thread and scenes are recreated using thoughtfully selected found fabrics. Some are tiered with text and book pages as a continuation of her recent body of work. For Valenzuela, his works depict bits and pieces of personal memories collected over the years, illustrating how these fleeting moments have fundamentally shaped and transformed the artist who is able to create balance between dissonant visuals and thematics. Faces and figures are charged with emotions, while segments of flora and fauna adorn the consistent graphic and varied illustration of the eye. We are accustomed to seeing these compositions by the artist, but by recreating them as soft sculptures, they unsettle and also calm our viewing.
Williams wrote in a text on subjectivity as a symptom that the function of art is to examine the nature and value of subjective experience. “Subjectivity is fundamental to the content of art.” As we encounter and read through the images that cradle the very personal recollections of Tecson and Valenzuela, we can likewise interrogate what is at stake for us in art. Maybe as Willams said, “(it) is nothing less— nor more— than ourselves.”
(Con Cabrera)
