MANILA, Philippines - Her portrait subjects may have suffered a bad rap early in the year, a good number of them being members of the young society set whose near hedonistic lifestyles became delicious fodder for gossipmongers in the blogosphere.
While the artist Nikki Luna didn?t intend or need to steer clear of that scene, it was finally time for her to go to New York, pursue a long-overdue application to an art school she?d been wanting to study in for years and years, and then finally to produce work that was less about fleshing out the souls of some glamorous gang but more about revealing her thoughts and quite possibly herself as a woman, mother and individual.
The results are all in her second solo exhibition, ?The Heartless Insistence of Domestic Absence,? which, after its three-week run in Mag:net Gallery at The Columns, Makati, has been extended another week until Sept. 17.
It?s a conceptual show composed of paintings, video art and installation, and littered with ironic, biting statements about a woman?s role in the home. There is an image of an unmade bed framed in a lightbox; a hundred or so synthetic nipples dipped in glitter and gathered together to form a heart; several line drawings depicting perfect, unhurried home life, rendered on black paper.
Luna, a stunner with a rich head of brown hair, is 31, but doesn?t look like she?s already a mother of three. She insists the works in the show does not necessarily form pieces from her own domestic life, although they are drawn from her thoughts on her own experiences.
?Most of my work is focused on issues I really feel strongly about and that I know of firsthand, then I attempt to put it out there universally,? says the artist. ?It does delve on domesticity, but I feel I was focusing more on it as a woman, an individual. I have a beautiful and very traditional mother. I adore her like the Virgin Mary. A mother-wife-homemaker like her is much more accepted in society?as compared to someone who goes against the flow.?
Residency program
The works in the Mag:net exhibit were done while pursuing her scholarship at Cooper Union School in New York last summer. The six-year-old residency program is geared for emerging artists who want to develop their art and gain exposure on the New York art scene while at it.
Out of over 120 applicants, Luna got in and is the first Filipino to be accepted in the month-long curriculum where artists work the entire week from 8 a.m. to midnight in their own sky-lit studio, and then culminating in an exhibit.
?I was overwhelmed by the discussions and it was really great exchanging ideas and being critiqued by the visiting artists and scholars. It reminded me of thesis time at UP Fine Arts.?
She was back in Manila by early August and began working on pieces to complete the Mag:net exhibition.
The show is at once playful, coldhearted and poignant. Across a soft sculpture of letters?made of fabrics once worn by children?that spell ?My name is not Mom? is a hologram that has the word ?Mother? written on it, and in reverse, that dirty word that starts with an F.
Down the short gallery hallway is a warm portrait of three motherless kids, seemingly at play, facing the horizon. Motherhood, the show seems to say, can contain all these: an abandoned bed; a postcard-pretty portrait; a gloomy afternoon watching the New York skyline; and the mother making sense and art of it all.
?I feel a woman should be confident as an individual, free of guilt and fulfilled,? says Luna. ?To value herself will show her children how to value and believe in themselves, too. I cannot be an example if I make my children more important than myself. I will only be teaching them to put others ahead of themselves and step back and be unhappy.?
