Carlotta Gallery

 THE INTERVIEW 

 How did your formative years within a family of visual artists inform your artistic sensibility? 

Growing up, I have always been so curious about various things. I remember every time my grandparents would visit the Philippines, they had a bunch of cassette tapes of their adventures around the US and those are some of the details I remember from my childhood. I recall different gadgets that my grandfather brought home and the brand that sticks with me is Olympus. My father on the other hand has always been a strange one, he tends to be obsessed with different things especially when it involves painting and colours.

I remember when he injured himself painting our roof with Apple Green colour then 2 weeks later he changed it to a darker shade. He loves to renovate and is always working on something. Seems like he just can't sit on his own for 10 minutes. All these memories seem like they were decades ago yet it feels like yesterday. After my parents divorce we rarely gathered around and watched those tapes and engaged with my fathers crafts. Like the brand Olympus,  rarely see them in camera shops, and apple green roofs. I rarely notice them. That attention to details and the feeling it gave me from my past and my present really shaped my artistic sensibility. 

 How has working across different cultural and geographic contexts shaped the evolution of your practice? 

Some people ask me, why can't I stick with one medium of art? One person from last year would ask me about my paintings and they would see me doing something else. The answer to that is, I always match my art with my surroundings with what I observe and what I think the city needs. When I was living in Cambodia I was fascinated with Khmer Traditional Paintings and I have always been mingling with expats who practice different mediums. However, I never get to see anyone doing contemporary art and I tried to match my art with what the other clients need like minimalist paintings for office decor.

Now, in Ivory Coast I never really expected that I would be creating and practicing something here. Documenting and photographing ruins was so sudden, I was just extremely curious and observant. I think my art is always evolving because I get to be a first timer at everything. I always tell people that I can be anything anywhere really. All I know is working across different cultural and geographic contexts would humble you and would let you discover more about yourself than what you could find in the country. Being open and adventurous nurtures artists. It's like a prescription, you can't survive without it. 

 What conceptual and emotional concerns guide your current focus on abandoned architecture and memory? 

For me, I think the biggest emotional concern that guides my current focus on abandoned buildings and memory is grief. It's a huge emotion and it has several stages. It exists in everyone we meet everyday, they probably wouldn't even know that they are grieving, it will just come out as behaviour. Some people would find those behaviours weird and some people would recognise them. I know this because I experienced it myself and I met a lot of people with different cultures yet grief is something that we all practice and observe.

Grief is extremely critical to our overall health and it doesn't necessarily have to be the death of a loved one. It can be a grief of oneself, which is a lot harder to recognise and to accept. Mothers can be grieving about their identity after pregnancy. Exchange students can be grieving about their old life back at their hometown. Immigrants can be grieving about their country, no one really knows what someone is grieving about. This is where my concept expands on abandoned buildings, these ruins that I photographed have stories. If walls could talk it would make us cry, laugh, and will make us feel all the deepest core that we have been avoiding. These buildings we live in carry our memories , our culture and some physically depicts it accurately.