Nona Garcia

(b. 1978, Manila, the Philippines)

Nona Garcia probes into the essence of things, setting up a dichotomy between the transparent and concealed, framed and natural, the sublime and the everyday. In 2013, she relocated to mountainous Baguio City in Benguet Province. Since then she has responded to the immediacy of this landscape, creating large-scale, highly realistic paintings of scenes viewed in and around her new home. Garcia’s X-ray works are another key aspect of her practice. Focusing on Cordilleran and indigenous artefacts, reliquaries of saints, or delicate animal bones designed in the form of a mandala, she has created installations using lightboxes as well as window-based works. Paradoxically, the process of exposure results in images that are more mysterious — bathed in luminescent blue light, each flaw made visible, the bones and objects take on a new life.

Garcia lives and works in Baguio City, the Philippines.