In search of my sacred, January 2023
Artinformal Gallery, Manila

I spent most of this past year cocooned in a liminal space of timelessness. This was especially the case in the first few months after giving birth to my second child last June. In this world there is no time to tell; no space to take up with a body that is solely mine; no mind to ponder beyond a purely embodied self. Some days I could feel my feet firmly grounded and my breath steady; and other days completely lost in a rage of mental anguish –  the painstaking effects of sleep deprivation in the early days of motherhood. But there were moments of lightness and rapture that struck me as something not of the physical world. It held me when I raged; it kept me from falling into a darkness that has taken me before; and it’s what I found myself channelling through my image-making in those postpartum months. I gave it expression through a constellation of symbols that became my resource of safety, strength and empowered fury. My paintings are witnesses to this emotional undergrowth that’s surfaced as lilies, shells, stars, milk glands and the all-seeing eye. They have come together in search of my sacred.