History of the Present
OPENING:
Tuesday, September 18, 2018, 6pm
EXHIBITION DATA:
September 18 to October 13, 2018
Filipino-Canadian Jill Paz (b. 1982) emigrated in the early eighties and after completing her studies (BFA and MFA) she returned to the Philippines to reconnect to the country, her ancestral home and the art scene.
Upon coming home, Jill Paz embraced the realms of both the intensely personal and the distant past by revisiting and reinterpreting the body of work of the late 19th century Filipino painter Félix Resurrección Hidalgo (1855-1913), her great grand-uncle and an important figure in the Philippine art history. Paz’s ancestral homage delved into the unstable nature of the past: as fragments, shards and recollections.
In her first solo exhibition at 1335MABINI, Paz investigates the implications of repair and renovation by exposing layered complexities in her works. She asks: what goes missing when a home, a person, or a society becomes renovated? What pulses behind the desire to re-build, or create an otherwise new veneer? And in what ways does the skeleton of the old inform the flesh of the new? Memory is part and parcel of renovation, which makes it a breeding ground of subjectivity in Paz’ work. In her new works, she renders the limits between object and being, history and folklore, fact and fiction, permeable.
Jill Paz’s works are detailed approximations crafted with photography, painting, computer programs and laser. She uses laser-cutting technology to bore, etch and puncture delicate layers; she programmed the laser-cutter in such a way it can etch a digital image on cardboard. In such a way, she is able to show the transient and vulnerable nature of paintings as objects: to be open to the possibility that the past and its objects can change, disperse or fall apart into total disarray. But when renovation and complete restoration of history is rendered impossible and quixotic, it may provide the opportune moment to create art that is steeped in life and the histories of the present.
Curated by Roy Voragen
