Kabunyan de Guia

(b. 1982, Baguio City, the Philippines)

Kabunyan de Guia is a mosaic artist who loves to take photographs and communicate his ideas through T-shirt paintings. The youngest son of Kidlat Tahimik and Katrin de Guia, he shares his father’s fancy for the unusual, for the things out of the scope of a frame. His is the art of a shape-shifter, a jester. If there is such a thing as dyslexic art, that would be his style. His stories tell tales about things that happen only while he is there. His photos are pictures captured almost by reflex, suddenly at the snap of a finger. His mosaics recast fragments into elegant coherence. He likes to make defect into effect. In life and in his art, he trips on shadows, spots clouds in puddles of rain, picks out the humor from the daily grind. In his art he maps his inner universe — responding to glimpses and stares of the intangible everywhere. He never formally studied techniques or styles, nor did he apprentice with anyone. Instead, he works with what he randomly finds, recycling broken dishes into mosaic work and the leftover grout from his mosaics into little statues and faces. He stitches his old clothes into colorful lampshades and reworks his photographs into paintings or collages. Anything can change into something else in his hands. Bathala Na!

De Guia lives and works in Davao City, the Philippines.