MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Silverlens is thrilled to participate in Art Basel Hong Kong for the 11th year from March 26-30, 2024. The participating artists represent a wide breadth of the gallery’s program from its Manila and New York City locations. This year’s highlights include Yee I-Lann (b. 1971, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia), Stephanie Syjuco (b. 1974, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Oakland, California), and Pow Martinez (b. 1983, Manila, Philippines). Showing for the first time in Art Basel Hong Kong are artist-activists and community leaders Imelda Cajipe Endaya (b. 1949, Manila, Philippines) and Carlos Villa (1936–2013, San Francisco, California). Rounding out the Silverlens booth are works by Pacita Abad (b. 1946, Batanes, Philippines; d. 2004, Singapore), Nicole Coson (b. 1992, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in London, England), and Michael Joo (b. 1966, New York, USA), who will be exhibiting with the gallery for the first time.
Silverlens, in collaboration with Ames Yavuz, will present Patricia Perez Eustaquio’s (b. 1977, Cebu, Philippines) new hybrid tapestry of digital and Filipino native weaves for the fair’s “Encounters” section.
PACITA ABAD
Pacita Abad’s work for Art Basel Hong Kong 2024, Tarhata sa Cortada (1983), depicts one of the many that migrated to Manila from the provinces of the Philippines. This work is part of Abad’s Immigrant Experience series of mixed-media trapunto paintings that features people she encountered in her travels around the world, particularly people of color from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. A true peripatetic, Abad lived in 11 countries and traveled to 62, getting to know the locals and their rich cultures and histories.
Abad’s work is currently on view at Silverlens Manila in the solo exhibition Love is Like a Heat Wave, and at the Barbican London in the group exhibition Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art. Her traveling retrospective, curated by Victoria Sung, will be on view at MoMA PS1, New York from 28 March to September 02, 2024.
NICOLE COSON
Tracing her history using a vessel of commerce, London-based artist Nicole Coson transforms produce transport crates–an object common in global trade – from a means to an end to an end in itself. Nicole prints with these crates, forming labyrinthian networks that become circuitry.
Coson will open her US solo debut at Silverlens New York on March 07.
IMELDA CAJIPE ENDAYA
Imelda Cajipe Endaya is presenting works that center on women empowerment and sisterhood rooted in the Filipino context. An artist-activist, cultural worker, and community leader, Endaya co- founded the feminist organization Kababaihan sa Sining at Bagong Sibol na Kamalayan (KASIBULAN). From her community work to her studio practice, she places women’s issues at the forefront. Both of Endaya’s works at Art Basel Hong Kong center on women, albeit with different approaches. The seminal piece Nudes and Foliage considers the female form in its subtleties, the curves of fauna blending with vignettes of women in various emotional states. Alongside it is Ang Sulat, part of her important Ventana series from the 1980s, depicting a woman and her spirit in front of a window, a common leitmotif in her work symbolizing the constraints of patriarchy.
Imelda will have her first solo exhibition at Silverlens Manila in April.
MICHAEL JOO
Employing diverse media and materials, Korean-American artist Michael Joo draws together creative and scientific modes in innovative conceptual work that reflects on the intersection between technology, perception, and the natural environment.
Michael’s materials are as diverse as his body of research, ranging from human sweat, silver nitrate, and bamboo. It could be argued that the artist’s prerogative is to achieve the impossible: to construct an object that is barely conceivable even in thought – much like the quest of speculative physics to think the unthinkable and articulate that which might possibly exist.
POW MARTINEZ
Known for his expressionist paintings, Pow Martinez presents all-new works for Art Basel Hong Kong 2024. Cartoonish, the paintings depict characters in a range of human actions, from the passive to the aggressive–having a cigarette to a boxing match. Drawing inspiration from 21st century pop culture, the internet, and classical Renaissance paintings, Martinez explores societal roles and consumption in contemporary culture.
His first artist monograph, written by curator and art historian Tony Godfrey, will be published by ArtAsiaPacific in June.
STEPHANIE SYJUCO
Stephanie Syjuco works in photography, sculpture, and installation, moving from handmade and craft-inspired mediums to digital editing and archive excavations.
Her Cargo Cults series (2013/2023) reinterprets historical ethnographic studio portraiture by using mass-manufactured goods from American shopping malls, restyled to highlight popular fantasies associated with “ethnic” patterns and costumes. As a preview to her upcoming Silverlens Manila solo exhibition, her first in her heritage country, Syjuco is also presenting her new series Force Majeure (2023), which culls from the Manila Chronicle’s archives from 1960’s. The newspaper, distributed in the Philippines, was shut down by the Marcos dictatorship at the onset of martial law in 1972.
Syjuco’s work is currently on view in the group exhibitions Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at The Edge of Visibility at the Guggenheim Museum, New York and Don’t Forget to Call Your Mother at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Her first artist monograph will be published in April by Radius Books, and her first solo exhibition at Silverlens Manila will open in August.
CAROS VILLA
Carlos Villa was a much loved and key artist, activist, and educator in San Francisco’s diasporic community. For the artist estate’s first time to show at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024, Silverlens presents Untitled (Face Prints with Wig and Photograph) (c.1979). Using his body as a brush, his face is serially imprinted on canvas, the canvas is cut, and collaged. Situated in the lower right corner is a photograph of Villa’s mother and at the opposite corner is a black wig, both evoking her memory. As an American artist of Filipino descent, Carlos embraced multiculturalism through his community work within the creative communities of the Bay Area for over thirty years, until his passing in 2013.
YEE I-LANN
It is urgent to situate the work of Sabahan-Malaysian-New Zealander Yee I-Lann within a contemporary conversation of art and craft. I-Lann works with Sulu Sea Bajaos and Sabah Keningau interior weavers, reworking the humble tikar (woven mat) into a practice that has become a platform for circular economies and community preservation. A familiar object to those in the Southeast Asian region, the mat is a portal to story-telling and a way to discover and unroll other knowledges.
As part of Art Basel Hong Kong’s programming, I-Lann will take part in the panel discussion Social Fabrics: Weaving as Sculpture, Painting, Performance, and Collaboration on 30 March 2024. The discussion will center on the art of weaving as a tradition of community building and social cohesion, featuring artists that utilize textiles in their works.
Her Cargo Cults series (2013/2023) reinterprets historical ethnographic studio portraiture by using mass-manufactured goods from American shopping malls, restyled to highlight popular fantasies associated with “ethnic” patterns and costumes. As a preview to her upcoming Silverlens Manila solo exhibition, her first in her heritage country, Syjuco is also presenting her new series Force Majeure (2023), which culls from the Manila Chronicle’s archives from 1960’s. The newspaper, distributed in the Philippines, was shut down by the Marcos dictatorship at the onset of martial law in 1972.
Syjuco’s work is currently on view in the group exhibitions Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at The Edge of Visibility at the Guggenheim Museum, New York and Don’t Forget to Call Your Mother at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Her first artist monograph will be published in April by Radius Books, and her first solo exhibition at Silverlens Manila will open in August.
CAROS VILLA
Carlos Villa was a much loved and key artist, activist, and educator in San Francisco’s diasporic community. For the artist estate’s first time to show at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024, Silverlens presents Untitled (Face Prints with Wig and Photograph) (c.1979). Using his body as a brush, his face is serially imprinted on canvas, the canvas is cut, and collaged. Situated in the lower right corner is a photograph of Villa’s mother and at the opposite corner is a black wig, both evoking her memory. As an American artist of Filipino descent, Carlos embraced multiculturalism through his community work within the creative communities of the Bay Area for over thirty years, until his passing in 2013.
YEE I-LANN
It is urgent to situate the work of Sabahan-Malaysian-New Zealander Yee I-Lann within a contemporary conversation of art and craft. I-Lann works with Sulu Sea Bajaos and Sabah Keningau interior weavers, reworking the humble tikar (woven mat) into a practice that has become a platform for circular economies and community preservation. A familiar object to those in the Southeast Asian region, the mat is a portal to story-telling and a way to discover and unroll other knowledges.
As part of Art Basel Hong Kong’s programming, I-Lann will take part in the panel discussion Social Fabrics: Weaving as Sculpture, Painting, Performance, and Collaboration on 30 March 2024. The discussion will center on the art of weaving as a tradition of community building and social cohesion, featuring artists that utilize textiles in their works.
A continuation of I-Lann’s ongoing TIKAR/MEJA series (2020–) is on view at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive’s Art Wall. Excerpts of TIKAR/MEJA are also part of Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art at the Barbican London before traveling to Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in September.
PATRICIA PEREZ EUSTAQUIO
Patricia Perez Eustaquio will present new tapestries, part of her ongoing series featuring historical images reworked and reinterpreted via photography and digital loom.
The new works, titled White Lies, are based on 20th century photographs taken by Americans when the Philippines was an American territory (1898 – 1946). The images show the incongruity of the subjects’ posture and dress as they are cast into character by the colonial gaze, as if the disguise would allow the subject to be finally seen. Rendered in a tapestry, the images are recast and woven into the language of costume and dress and urges the viewer to further examine the implications of what were once thought to be benign, superficial interventions. In the five-meter high work for Encounters, White Lies (Balanced on A Ball), the artist extended the borders of the image with a quilt of Philippine native weaves that have had a rich history way before the Philippines was colonized by either the USA or Spain.
Eustaquio will have her first solo exhibition at Silverlens New York in September.
Art Basel Hong Kong will run from March 26-30, 2024 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
