Gajah Gallery Jakarta is taking a significant step with the presentation of Possession: To Have & To Hold, its first group show featuring contemporary artists based in the Philippines. This exhibition, curated by Joyce Toh, delves into the intricate and multifaceted concept of possession, exploring the human compulsion to surround ourselves with objects and things while also proposing an interpretation beyond the attainment of things or even a concern for utilitarian function.
This exhibition is a significant presentation as it not only underscores Indonesia’s and the Philippines’ historical resonance but also highlights their strengths as hubs of contemporary art. As part of our ongoing commitment to fostering cultural exchange, Possession builds upon our successful collaborations, such as the recent showcase of Filipino artists at Gajah Gallery Singapore last October. These efforts have led to continued representations in international art fairs and biennales, further establishing the robust presence of Southeast Asian art on the global stage.
Several Filipino artists participating in this exhibition have been engaging in intensive collaborations with our foundry, the Yogya Art Lab (YAL) in Yogyakarta. This partnership has resulted in a creative rejuvenation, empowering the artists to create works in bronze and new experimental materials. The exchange of ideas and techniques at YAL has not only enhanced the individual practices of the artists involved but has also catalysed a deeper understanding and appreciation of each other’s artistic heritage.
The curation of artworks exhibited in this show will challenge our relationship with possessions, materials or otherwise; the symbolic functions it serves in demarcating time and space. It speaks not only to the regional kinship between Indonesia and the Philippines but also to a broader symptom of humanity: the tendency to shape identity, status, and aspirations around material possessions and attachment to objects. As we cling to items beyond necessity for sentimental or aesthetic reasons, the exhibition prompts us to question whether we own our possessions or they own us, thus underscoring the powerful role possessions play in our lives.
About the Artists
BenCab (b. 1942, Malabon, the Philippines)
A National Artist for Visual Arts since his conferment in 2006, Benedicto Cabrera, or BenCab, is an icon in the Philippines. He was a pioneer in the 1970s for addressing social and political issues, and for his portrayal of Filipino identity. He is acclaimed for his draftsmanship in expressing universal human sympathies and everyday narrative drama.
In 2009, he established the BenCab Museum in his mountain home of Baguio, where he houses his personal collection of tribal art from the Cordillera highlands, as well as contemporary Philippine art.
An undergraduate of the University of the Philippines’ College of Fine Arts, BenCab was later conferred a doctorate in Humanities, honoris causa, by his alma mater in 2009. He was conferred a second honorary doctorate by the University of the Cordilleras in 2018.
A highlight of his artistic career was the year-long celebration of BenCab 50 Creative Years in 2015, which involved retrospective exhibitions in eight museums and the publication of a 2-volume book BenCab FILIPINO ARTIST, authored by art historian Patrick Flores.
Kawayan de Guia (b. 1979 Baguio City, the Philippines)
Kawayan de Guia is an artist and curator whose practice spans painting, installation and sculpture. His artworks use indigenous and colonial artefacts, playfully transforming them into lavish and often ironic critiques of consumerism, global trade and the impact of the American occupation of the Philippines.
De Guia draws upon a wide array of Pinoy material culture including Jeepneys, Dangwa buses, jukeboxes, torpedoes and Ifugao rice gods. By juxtaposing remnants of differing periods, meanings and methods of production, de Guia unfolds the precarious narratives in which these objects come into being, and how they shape the complex social and political.
In 2007, he received the prestigious Ateneo Art Award for his exhibition ‘Incubator’, which paid homage to his many artistic forebears. In 2012, the artist initiated AX(iS) Art Project, a biannual festival that engages curators and contemporary artists with local communities and artisans. Across five days, participants travelled by bus along the Halsema highway between Baguio and Bontoc in northern Luzon, creating site-specific works that responded to the changing cultural fabric of the region. In 2014, he participated in ‘Markets of Resistance’, a collaborative art project that allowed members of the public to barter for artworks. De Guia’s De Liberating a Fall (2014) consisted of a large-scale Statue of Liberty mounted above Baguio City Public Market. The work interrogates the ‘liberating’ force of capitalism and the economic impacts of globalisation on domestic workers and regional trade. (Words by Amy Weng)
De Guia lives and works in Baguio City, the Philippines.
Kiri Dalena (b. 1975, Manila, the Philippines)
Kiri Dalena is a visual artist who lives and works in Manila, Philippines. Her work consistently addresses social inequalities and injustices, particularly in the Philippines. In all of her artworks, she asserts the importance of protest and activism against state persecution. Her work has been displayed and screened internationally including documenta fifteen (2022), the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Berlin Biennale 11 (2020), Manila Biennale (2018), Shanghai Biennale (2018), Jakarta Biennale (2017), Busan Biennale (2016), Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2015), Fukuoka Asian Art Trienniale (2014), and Singapore Biennale (2013). She works both as an individual artist and as part of collectives.
Leslie de Chavez (b. 1978, Manila, the Philippines)
Manila-born Filipino artist Leslie de Chavez has been widely recognized for his incisive and sensible forays into history, cultural imperialism, religion, and contemporary life. Responding to urgent material conditions through his deconstructions of master texts, icons, and the symbols of his times, de Chavez strikes a balance between iconoclasm and an affirmative outlook to the relevance and accountability of art to one’s milieu.
Leslie de Chavez has held several solo exhibitions in the Philippines, China, Korea, Singapore, UK, and Switzerland. He has also participated in several notable exhibitions and art festivals, which include the Singapore Biennale 2013, 3rd Asian Art Biennale in Taiwan 2011, 3rd Nanjing Triennial in China 2008, First Pocheon Asia Biennale in South Korea 2007. A two-time award winner (2010/2014) of the Ateneo Art Awards for Visual Art, Leslie de Chavez is also the director/founder of the artist-run initiative Project Space Pilipinas, in Lucban, Quezon.
De Chavez’s practice has involved the creation of diverse art forms that scrutinize various issues in Philippine society such as history, colonialism, religion, imperialism, miseducation, power struggle, contemporary culture, politics and social values. His process entails the resurfacing of historical templates, re-examining contemporary social discourse and rediscovering introspection as methods to pin down the truth about the many realities Filipinos experience. As an artist, he believes that responding through art to our continuous victimization from the chronic conditions of our society can be truly liberating.”
Marina Cruz (b. 1982, Hagonoy, Bulacan Province, the Philippines)
Marina Cruz graduated cum laude from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. In 2021, she presented Tide Table curated by Patrick Flores at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts. In 2007, she won both the grand prize of the Philippine Art Awards and the Ateneo Art Awards. She was also awarded the Freeman Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in 2008, and the Thirteen Artists Award in 2012.
Marina Cruz is predisposed in each exhibition to use her diverse collection of antique, nominal, and semantic material in such a way as to bring into attention some characteristic of painterly representation. The astute presentational tactics; the devices of display and the source of her imagery; the recollection of events in her family history and the history of her depicted objects, pile the many layers in Marina Cruz that are waiting to be surfaced and understood. For this reason, notwithstanding her intentionally nostalgic use of old things and old lives, we suitably recognize Cruz’s practice as a meticulously contemporary one, primarily concerned with the conflicting nature of the painted object and the actual event behind it.
There’s a flair of a simultaneously tangible but untouchable presence felt in the photographs uncovered by Cruz and her grandmother from more than fifty years ago which serve as the source for her paintings. She deals with the stories of survival and recapture of the dresses of her twin mother and aunt which she summons in her exploration of the life and after-life that inhabits these objects. Her painting process, like one’s memory, is often faintly trailed, recognizable under her elusive lexis of portraiture.
Mark Justiniani (b. 1966, Victorias City, Negros Occidental, the Philippines)
Born in Victorias, Negros Occidental, Mark Justiniani grew up in a small town surrounded by sugar cane plantations and mills. Coming from a family of engineers and artists, he established himself as a professional artist known for his figurative paintings and jeepney assemblage using stainless steel, stickers and decals . He was actively involved in artist collectives such as Grupong Salingpusa (1985-1992), Artista ng Bayan or ABAY (1987-1990), and Sanggawa (1994-1998).
Throughout his career, Mark has received numerous awards and recognition for his artistic contributions. Notable among these are his Grand Prize win in the Metrobank National Painting Competition in 1990, the CCP’s 13 Artists Awards in 1994, the Jurors’ Choice in the Philippine Art Awards in 1998, and the Solidarity Award bestowed by the Pilipino Worker’s Center and the City of Los Angeles, California in 2005. He has also been invited to exhibit at highly esteemed art events, such as the 2nd Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, Australia; the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; Artjog in Jogjakarta; the Children’s Biennale at the National Art Gallery in Singapore; the Japanese Palais SKD in Dresden, Germany; and the Yokohama Triennial in Japan. Most notably, Justiniani participated in the 58th Venice Biennale in Italy in 2019, where his compelling work titled “Arkipelago” represented the Philippines.
However, Justiniani eventually shifted his artistic focus towards exploring the visible spectrum and delving deeper into his inquiries on realism. This marked a significant transformation in his artistic practice. He began to delve into the science behind his work, conducting profound investigations into perception, light, and visual phenomena. Through his art, he embarked on an exploration of the boundaries of realism and its interaction with the human experience.
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.
Rocky Cajigan (b. 1988, La Trinidad, Benguet, the Philippines)
Rocky Acofo Cajigan is a Bontok-Kankanaey visual artist. His work in painting, installation, and assemblage explores material culture, indigeneity, and museology. He became a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council – New York Fellowship in 2023. He won the Ateneo Art Awards Fernando Zobel Prize for Visual Art in 2016 and was shortlisted in 2023. He is a recipient of the Thirteen Artists Awards in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in 2024. His work has been exhibited at the 10th Asia-Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, Australia. His last solo presentation, Place of Origin, was presented at The Drawing Room in Makati, Philippines in 2023.’
Cajigan lives and works in La Trinidad, Benguet, Philippines
Rodel Tapaya (b. 1980, Montalban, the Philippines)
Rodel Tapaya is a contemporary Filipino artist, celebrated as one of the most important painters working in Southeast Asia. His paintings are characterized by visionary narrative tableaus, melding folklore, historical and personal references into painterly figurations. By forming thought-provoking instantiations of myth and contemporary existence – such as beastly incarnations of gods beside factories and television antennas – his works are both a retelling and a continuation of the oral and pictorial tradition of his milieu. Affectingly intimate and eclectic, his process mines indigenous craft that functions as a parallel to the text and provides insight into an amalgam of pre-colonial culture and contemporary political ethos. “I just find myself looking into these folk narratives […] which lets us see a map of the future,” he has said of his process.
Born on July 10, 1980 in Montalban Philippines, Tapaya was a student at the College of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines when he won the Nokia Art Prize in 2001, which gave him a grant to study at the Parsons School of Design and at the University of Helsinki. After a successful series of exhibitions, he moved his home and studio to Bulacan, the Philippines in 2006 where he currently lives with his wife, the painter Marina Cruz-Garcia, and their three children.
His works are held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Australia, Michael and Janet Buxton Collection, Mori Art Museum, The Hori Science and Art Foundation, Singapore Art Museum, Bencab Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art, Pinto Art Museum, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Deutsche Bank Collection, SEACO, and several international private collections. Tapaya was awarded the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award in 2012 and was the winner of the Asia-Pacific Breweries Signature Art Prize in 2011.
