PAIR 1
Liana Maris & Marz Aglipay
Liana Maris & Marz Aglipay
Artist
Liana Maris (b. 1991) blends drawing, collage & book production in their visual art. They have shown interest in print and publication during their school years, being part of the Malate Literary Folio in De La Salle University Manila from 2007 to 2010. Since 2014, they have honed their craft as a Graphic Designer at Burnwater Design Studios. From 2019 to the present, they have transitioned towards Print Production & Operations at Canva.
In between professional work, Liana Maris has participated in art markets including Komiket & Better Living Through Xeroxography to showcase their Zine and Collage work. These events led them to group exhibitions, recently in Manila Middle Ground. Their work has also extended to Bacolod, invited by galleries House of Frida and Block 17 Art Space.
In September 2023, they became a Micro Grant awardee from Cebu Art Book Fair to produce their Art book “Signs of Life” into a Zine.
Over the years, their work has moved through Graphic Design, Ballpoint pen drawing, Abstract collage and Zine Production. Influenced by the range of media, they now produce multiple unique art books that feature daily mark making, torn up drawings & product packaging fragments. With their art as a personal form of diary keeping, these elements serve as reflections on how to lead a healthier configuration of their life. The act of remixing and rearranging their graphic media illustrate intimate methods on how to organize emotions.
Art Critic
Marz Aglipay is an independent writer-curator and printmaker. She has been working in publishing covering the arts and culture scene in the Philippines and Southeast Asia for the last 10 years. Her distinctions include being a Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prizes in Art Criticism shortlisted writer.
Marz has been an advocate of art writing through workshops. She has facilitated workshops and talks in Far Eastern University, the University of the Philippines Cebu, Art+ Magazine, and La Herencia Davao. Her present engagements include writing accessible exhibition notes for artists, galleries, and institutions and contributing features on art-related events to various publications.
Her current interests lie in topics which include the promotion of artists from the regions, art practices in the periphery, best-practices for sustainability and accountability within the context of the local art ecosystem, and helping up and coming artists articulate their creative projects.
Stage 0
Conceptualization, Portfolio Review, & Artist Interview
The artist provides a brief description of the concept they intend to explore or develop for Confluence.
---
Notes on initial concept
Written by Liana Maris
In this project, I explore how to communicate a shared pain and comfort through collage on paper objects. Because these feelings are often internal, I’ve found difficulty conveying the experience with the languages I’ve had available. Often in work, health, and personal relationships, the challenge to communicate these can lead to misunderstanding. While the help I receive is sincere, I am still plagued with doubts of whether my physical, mental, or even emotional pains are even real. Through collage & drawing, I find comfort in the visual calm I can achieve. And in processing my anxieties, creating and arranging visual elements allows me to see that things have the potential to fall into place.
This work weaves three elements. Comfort is represented through fabric from clothing and textile objects. The billowing forms show the softness of blankets and garments that are able to wrap someone within a sense of ease. Contrasting this familiarity are sharp cutouts of AI generated images to represent pain. Prompted by the meaning of my own name*, these digitally constructed forms and textures are in the realm of imagination, representing how one’s internal pain can feel indescribable. To ground these images together are written marks, reflecting on the ineptitude of expressing how one feels pain and comfort blending together.
All three serve as patterns for paper objects in a memory box to represent a person’s life. Examples include items that can feel personal: letters, tickets from entertaining events, music records, blankets, and medicine bottles. While tangible, being made in paper shows how emotion can be both enduring and fleeting— pain and comfort in flux.
As the artist, my chosen visuals are comprised of the language with which I express my internal world. For the audience, I intend for the visuals to beg the question upon their own personal pains and comforts: how are my emotions towards these items contrasted to that of others? Within the pattern of these objects, how does my frame of reference relate to how others experience the same within their own contexts? With the patterns illustrated in abstract forms, they invite a continued challenge of perspective as to what it is they see and feel.
*”Liana” means to wrap or to bind in French, “Maris” means the sea in Latin
The art critic collects information by reviewing portfolios and conducting artist interviews, which they subsequently use to formulate an initial assessment of the artist's artwork and creative process.
---
About Liana Maris
Written by Marz Aglipay
Liana Maris is an adept figurative artist presently exploring the idea of duality through collage work. Her portfolio showcases early works of mostly figurative pen and ink drawing exercises as well as tile collages. She diligently practiced these mediums from 2018 until she took a hiatus from art at the height of the community lockdowns in 2020.
The following year, she pivoted her practice towards a deeper exploration of collage as a medium. Lia's collage work is made from repurposing gathered and found images sourced from packaging materials, printed matter, and her old works. She's particular with her method of organizing these images, sometimes by color, shapes, the year she acquired them, and contexts that are not explicit in the final collage.
In her arsenal of collected images are her "starting marks." These are random beginning markings the artist has made on a piece of paper during her drawings or art making. This could be visually likened to the sheet of paper stationed at a pen or marker rack at an office supply store for testing inks.
At this point of the project, the artist is still in the process of finding a collage aesthetic that she can easily be identified by, her work is shaping up to an aesthetic that makes use of tiled images that are supplemented by the contexts of the raw materials she collects.
She loosely categorizes her practice as "expressionist collage", a fitting description for how she utilizes her collection of images. Her approach to collage is borne out of reconstructing the original contexts of her materials and turning them into a visual narrative or documentation of her day-to-day life.
Her day job as a graphic designer exposes her to commercial print processes such as layout design and doing final art (a process that may include checking colors and how printers and digital screens are calibrated for production) helps her shape ideas on a culminating expression for her work. She tends to be drawn to analog formats such as zines. Her approach to zines veers away from the conventional saddle-stitched format and takes on the form of a sculptural paper object. Lia has presented in her portfolio some examples of her sculptural zines that incorporate her collage work.
Lia is on track to finding her unique aesthetic in this medium by merging her collage expressions with her sculptural approach to zine-making.
Stage 1
Study Work & Work-in-Progress (WIP) Analysis
The artist translates their written concept from Stage 0 into a tangible form and provides a brief artist statement elucidating the work. This stage functions as a research or study phase, focusing on the execution and development of both the form and content of their concept.
---
The art critic examines the transitional phases of an artist's production, exploring how the artwork and the artist's practice evolve during the creative process.
---
Stage 1 Artwork
Creature Comforts (Journal)
Liana Maris
Collage on Paper
210 x 297 mm (A4) when flat
74 x 105 mm (A7) when folded
Artist Statement:
In this project, I explore how to communicate a shared pain and comfort through collage on paper objects. Because these feelings are often internal, I’ve found difficulty conveying the experience with the languages I’ve had available. Through collage & drawing, I find comfort in the visual calm I can achieve. And in processing my anxieties, creating and arranging visual elements allows me to see that things have the potential to fall into place.
As the artist, my chosen visuals are comprised of the language with which I express my internal world. For the audience, I intend for the visuals to beg the question upon their own personal pains and comforts: how are my emotions towards these items contrasted to that of others? Within the pattern of these objects, how does my frame of reference relate to how others experience the same within their own contexts? With the patterns illustrated in abstract forms, they invite a continued challenge of perspective as to what it is they see and feel.
--------------------------------
Stage 1 Text
Work-in-Progress (WIP) Analysis of Creature Comforts (Journal)
Written by Marz Aglipay
Understanding an artist's choice of materials and their creative process enriches our interpretation of their work. In "Reading The Image" by Alice Guillermo, we are provided with tools to perceive art as a vessel that ignites dialogue. This idea is central to Liana Maris's inaugural piece for the Confluence project, titled "Creature Comforts," currently in progress.
Liana Maris's collage works stem from her process of documenting personal experiences, which is through meticulously assembling bits and pieces from her collection of paper scraps and repurposed printed matter. While her collages may be appreciated for their aesthetic balance, the true depth lies in the context of her work, making replication a challenging task.
The artist is an avid collector of stationery goods and printed matter that range from discarded product packaging, particularly of the things she consumes such as day-to-day consumer products and medicine packaging. For her, what one puts inside one’s body to nourish oneself, whether on a spiritual or physical level is among the things she values.
In the ongoing Confluence project, the artist has outlined three concepts she aims to address: comfort, pain, and language, she has purposefully made them visible in her work-in-progress. Although not immediately evident, Liana incorporates cutouts of images from a clothing catalog, capturing various textures of soft fabrics. This intentional choice of material is a subtle allusion to the theme of softness. Contrasting these soft textures are sharp cutouts of AI-generated images, prompted by the components of her name—Liana, meaning to wrap or bind in French, and Maris, meaning sea in Latin. These contrasting elements symbolize the dualities of pain.
Stage 2
Study Execution & Review of Related Works or Literature
Study Execution & Review of Related Works or Literature
The artist will refine the artwork based on insights gained during Stage 1 deliberation and production. Their partner will offer relevant literature or artwork to support the enhancement of both the form and content of the piece.
The art critic persists in examining the artist's creative process and decision-making. Moreover, they seek out relevant literature or artwork that can enhance the development of their counterpart's work.
Stage 1 Artwork
Creature Comforts (Keys)
Liana Maris
Collage on Paper
1.25" x 2.75" per key (5) 3" x 3" keychain
Stage 2 Artworks
Creature Comforts (Shoes)
Liana Maris
Collage on Paper
4" x 9.5" per shoe (2)
Artist Statement:
Not much feedback was given to my work last meeting. I mentioned this to my partner and found that my idea was clear from the start of the project. With that assurance, I went ahead with production as I planned. I set up the ground for all 5 objects and realized that I may need more material for the collage pieces than I thought. In the past month, I have increased my supply of magazines and printed AI generated images to cover for my production. Using what I already had, I started on the smaller items (keys and shoes) to present how my collages are applied to 3D objects. Because the pieces are small, I had to refine my collage pieces so that they will be consistent in shape and layout as I scale up to the larger items. The biggest change in this whole process was how I would present my full work. Marz asked me this in our last check in; how would I situate the items in space? In the call, we came up with the idea to set them up with a chair and side table as if the audience is at my living room. This would invite the audience to interact with my items. In feeling the fragile and textured paper objects, it adds to my work’s call for practicing empathy for the pain and comfort I have colored my objects in.
--------------------------------
Stage 2 Text
Work-in-Progress (WIP) Analysis with Review of Related Work or Literature of Creature Comforts (Keys & Shoes)
Written by Marz Aglipay
An exercise of caution against pre-empting readings of a work.
How do art critics talk about a work-in-progress? From a writer’s perspective, I am used to seeing the final output and reading the work. Knowing the context of an artwork, if not obvious at my first encounter, is an aid for me to either validate or invalidate if the work successfully elicits a response or if it mirrors the inquiries that the artist hopes to bring to light.
This has been a source of minor vexations, when the full context of a work is laid out and understanding the temperament of the artist, being armed with a wealth of context. How much of this information should this writer withhold from the public that has yet to see an actual work?
This is an interesting point of the Confluence project where we, the artist and me as a critic, are at a point where we have a hand in assisting an artist to develop their ideas and seeing partial works resembling a possible finished output.
Liana Maris' Creature Comforts is a reimagining of her collage work into sculptural objects. Aesthetically, she employs a maximalist approach to collage aesthetics, utilizing an arsenal of printed matter that ranges from cut-outs from clothing catalogs to printed AI-generated images where she used the meaning of her name (to wrap / envelope, and sea) as prompts, among other printed matter. She begins by working on her collage on a huge sheet of paper, which she will reshape, cut, and fold into structural objects.
According to Tate Modern, collage is described as both a technique and resulting work of art in which pieces of paper, photographs, fabric, and other ephemera are arranged and stuck down onto a supporting surface. Furthermore, the contexts and sources of the elements that Liana has meticulously selected for her collage are concealed from the viewer.
The decision to transform the collage into structural objects reflects the artist’s idea of the zine as a modality to present finished work, despite the collage itself being a sufficient finished output on its own. She veers away from the traditional zine format which often assumes the form of folded printed catalogs. In Creature Comforts, she opts for 3D forms to accommodate the potential of the work to be experienced in a way that mimics the idea of looking at used everyday objects.
Liana established from the beginning of this project that her focus is on the themes of coalescing opposites: pain and comfort and the difficulty of expressing this phenomenon. It can also be seen in the intended output thus far, the collage itself contains amalgamating symbols of pain and comfort that appear ambiguous to the viewer.
However, now, the artist is also confronted with the dilemma of knowing what she wants to communicate through her work vis-à-vis how obvious or not these are to the public.
As a critic-collaborator, the work is already demystified to me. Her choice of medium and how she utilizes them suits her idea of difficulty in articulating the ebbs and flows of pain and comfort. The inability to distinguish this experience can also be a metaphor for how the public may read the work, not knowing the complete contexts of Liana’s collages but simply as a collection of everyday objects.
As such, reflecting on Barthe’s essay Death of an Author, the responsibility of finding meaning in the artist’s work remains with the reader. As a critic, I am aware of my responsibility of creating the scenario or recreating the experience of the work for the benefit of the reader. At the same time, I remain self-conscious about separating myself from the work so as not to pre-empt the viewer with the burden of the full contexts of the work, including those that cannot be readily inferred, which could take the experience of Creature Comforts away from them.
Bernardo Ortiz Campo talks about the void of distance between the reader of the texts and the work itself. I do, after all, hope that the writing will extend the life of the work after the project has concluded. Ortiz-Ocampo's essay augments the points of Barthe's Death of the Author in this sense. Does the critic in this situation remove themself from revealing how the work came to be as opposed to letting the work speak for itself? The critic should also be aware of the agencies of both the viewer of the work and the person reading about the work.
Since my last meeting with the artist, I asked, what is your measurement of success for this artwork? She ponders this and says that she envisions Creature Comforts as a work that could engage beyond its aesthetics.
Looking back at our previous face-to-face meeting with the Confluence participants, we both acknowledge how we revealed all the unapparent elements of her work, possibly why the work received little feedback. It could also be a case of the group still warming up to the idea that this pair is eager to receive points for improvement, instead of letting the work speak for itself.
This eagerness is also a pain point, a desire for validation that the artist seeks from her work, one also shared by this writer who hopes to see the artist succeed with her intentions for Creature Comforts.
Introducing another aid for the viewer by way of a catalog or a study guide that will have questions that the artist wishes to ask the viewer, not directly referencing the work on display, is another possible object that Liana may introduce as a supplement to the work.
Because this is still a work-in-progress, perhaps this tension of wanting to preserve the integrity of Creature Comforts, being worthy of experience, as opposed to me and the artist feeding the contexts to the viewer before it is experienced, is a unique exercise of caution against pre-empting readings of a work.
References:
Barthes, R (trans. S Heath). "The death of the author." Image, music, text (1977): 142-148. PDF.
Campo, Bernardo Ortiz. "Criticism and Experience." e-flux journal #13 (2010). PDF.
Guillermo, Alice. "Reading the image." Image to Meaning: Essays on Philippine Art (2001). Print.
Tate . Tate: Art Term - Collage. n.d. website. 1 March 2024.
Stage 3
Context
The artist progresses from Stage 0 to Stage 2 with a deliberate focus on the context of their work. During this phase, they are encouraged to challenge the possibilities of their work, exploring new potential in material, medium, or form.
---
The art critic touches into the broader context of the artist's work, exploring how external factors such as cultural, social, political, and historical influences shape the creation and interpretation of the piece. By examining the artist's environment, personal experiences, and the prevailing ideologies of the time, the critic uncovers deeper layers of meaning within the artwork. This analysis allows for a more comprehensive understanding of how the artist's intentions and the artwork’s reception are intertwined with the world around it, ultimately providing richer insights into its significance.
---
Stage 3 Artwork
Creature Comforts (Installation)
Liana Maris
Collage on Paper
Size Variable
Artist Statement:
What was apparent in the last meeting was people asking about the "pain" I wanted to convey in the work. Since the start of the project, my emotional context towards the work has been shared to Marz but I was hesitant to share this very personal point. In the process, I've given more importance to the technical aspects of the work than the emotional, something I want the audience to feel when engaging with it. Creature Comforts are defined as material comforts that contribute to physical ease and well-being. Borne out of my own medical and mental frustrations, the work explores difficulty in finding language to communicate one’s own pain and comfort. With most of the pieces constructed (done or in the process), this can now be viewed as a full installation rather than a series of separate objects. They are placed as if the audience chances upon my personal space, invited to interact with them to inspect what my "creature comforts" are. They are made with paper as if they are an extension of my personal reflections coming out of a diary. With the collaged patterns, these are a peek into my inner feelings towards these objects, how they provide me comfort amidst the overwhelm of pain. While I cannot express these explicitly, especially when I am not in the room, the content of the journal item is set as a chance discovery to the viewer to have more clues into my personal pains and how the objects mean to me. As they are in my personal space, it will be like stumbling upon my diary. Like how you can't fully know a person, this installation provides what it can and to challenge the audience to understand or empathize with the conflicting pain & comfort already woven into the piece.
--------------------------------
Stage 3 Text
Work-in-Progress (WIP) Analysis with Contextual Analysis of Creature Comforts
Written by Marz Aglipay
What is Creature Comforts?
Creature Comforts is an installation of everyday objects crafted from folded paper collages, giving them a new life. Among these objects are: a journal titled "Do you think how I feel?", a set of keys named "Is this a safe space?", a medicine bottle labeled "Does this heal you too?"; a pair of shoes titled "Have you walked a mile in my shoes?"; and a blanket named "Are we cut from the same cloth?" These objects allude to comforts that contribute to the physical ease and well-being of an individual, hence its title.
Collectively, the pieces within the installation embody how pain and comfort can intertwine, a phenomenon often missed by those used to discomfort and challenging to express. In this context, the familiarity of pain can paradoxically offer comfort, blurring the boundaries between the two feelings. This complexity may be difficult to grasp for individuals predisposed to discomfort.
Her maximalist collage includes textures of soft fabrics as an allusion to the idea of softness. This is contrasted by sharp cutouts from AI-generated images prompted by the components of the artist’s name: Liana, meaning to wrap or bind in French, and Maris, meaning sea in Latin. By Contrasting these meanings through the collage and its associated titles, its context becomes a perceptual activity.
Liana Maris transforms her 2D collages into 3D sculptural forms. The repeated process of making collages and transforming them into everyday objects is crucial in getting the message across since it would not be as effective to zero in on one object that may come off as an aesthetic choice by the artist.
The audience experiences Creature Comforts by entering an imagined personal space. Here the viewer is inside a space where collaged objects, decorated with meanings unknown to them, are allusions to the contained individual experience of a flood of emotional pain and the accompanying labor of articulating these feelings. In effect, viewers may not readily perceive the presence of pain when observing these objects. The artist's use of collage conceals these meanings, mirroring the nature of emotional pain as it is not a visible experience.
Individuals often live through it without having the tools to articulate and make sense of this experience, just as the discomfort of emotional pain is not a visible experience.
The writer finds a similarity between this installation and Pam Yan-Santos's Please Handle With Care Version 2 (2009) on an aesthetic level. Please Handle With Care offers a similar experience. Yan-Santos wraps objects with her son's worksheets as a code to unravel meanings we would typically assign to objects, suggesting how we relate to them. In addition, the artist cites the writings of Angeli Lacson’s “Unbecoming” as a source of inspiration for this installation. The book is written as a series of autobiographical notes, illustrating the writer’s clinical experiences addressing a disability, capturing the underpinnings of Liana Maris' Creature Comforts.
Piecing together contexts
In Claire Bishop’s essay Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, she mentions that photographic documentation of relational work gives little context of the dynamic that emerges from the work, and written accounts offer only partial assistance in deciphering the context of an art piece. This is also true of Creature Comforts as the work is seemingly void of contexts when the audience experiences it firsthand.
In a conscious effort to not take away the experience of discovering the work, Liana Maris indulges the audience with context clues about the pieces within the installation. The journal “Do you think how I feel?” contains snippets of the artist’s insights on why the work exists and how it relates to the other objects. She does not explicitly indicate that the journal is there for the audience to interact with given the nature of journals and diaries are personal but often written in a manner that assumes a reader (who is not the writer) is the one reading it. It is by chance discovery that the audience can forge a deeper understanding of the work through this piece within the installation.
References:
Pam Yan-Santos Please Handle with Care Version 2 on display at Pinto Museum features common house objects wrapped in worksheets. https://www.pintoart.org/please-handle-with-care-version2
Unbecoming explores questions of loss, illness, pain, and disability through a series of notes. It attends, with care, to the minutiae of everyday life shaped by illness and injury to center the ordinariness of non-healthiness under capital and empire, as well as the ways in which this unwellness invites new forms of political belonging and solidarity.
Stage 4
Synthesis
The artist, at the final stage of production, must make critical decisions that encapsulate their entire creative journey. This stage is not just about completion, but about reflection—drawing insights from the process that led up to this point. Every experiment, adjustment, and challenge faced in earlier stages influences the choices made now. By looking back on the evolution of their work, the artist ensures that the final piece not only stands as a finished product but also embodies the intentions, revisions, and learnings from the creative process. It becomes a culmination of both vision and experience.
---
The art critic engages in a reflective process, examining the developmental stages of the artist's work, including its conceptual evolution and creative process, within the context of the Confluence project. By analyzing the dialogues, critiques, and interactions that have shaped the work, the critic produces a comprehensive synthesis that captures both the essence of the artist's practice and the collaborative journey. This synthesis not only highlights the formal and thematic aspects of the artist's work but also delves into the deeper layers of meaning and intent, offering an insightful narrative that bridges the artist's creative vision with critical interpretation. Through this process, the critic contextualizes the work within the broader framework of contemporary art, while simultaneously foregrounding the unique contributions of the artist and the collaborative dynamics fostered by Confluence.
---
Stage 4 Artwork
Creature Comforts (Installation)
Liana Maris
Collage on Paper
Size Variable
Video Performance
Artist Statement:
Often when we see a journal, a set of keys, a medicine bottle, a pair of shoes, and a blanket, we see them as just that. But in the context of a person’s life, when all of these items are left behind, these are the only clues left for those that remain. If a person is no longer in the room to use items that bring them comfort, how do others make sense of the life they lived? In the years of creating artwork I adhered to a format: create a series of artworks, write a piece to thread then together in a zine, and sell it at a convention. Coming into 98B’s Confluence has challenged this template, seeing my concept evolve from a collage, to a series of 3D objects, to an installation, and to push it further to performance. I think it was fitting that this concept was part of a project that opens up the work to an external critic. Discussing my work with Marz, as well as the monthly deliberations with the group, has not only validated my concept but has pushed it further to a more coherent form. Arranging the items as Installation highlights situates them in a personal space. As I added writing embedded into one of the items (meant as a chance discovery), reciting the piece while interacting with the items lets the viewer in on how they are used. In this work, I deliberately constructed and covered the paper items with collage to bring my own emotions forward, an attempt to let people “see” how I balanced internal pain with tangible Creature Comforts. For a new viewer, I invite them to look closer, to explore and, hopefully, to empathize with what I mean. I aim this to be their turn to find understanding.
Artist’s Reflection on the Confluence Journey:
Often when we see a journal, a set of keys, a medicine bottle, a pair of shoes, and a blanket, we see them as just that. But in the context of a person’s life, when all of these items are left behind, these are the only clues left for those that remain. If a person is no longer in the room to use items that bring them comfort, how do others make sense of the life they lived?
In the years of creating artwork I adhered to a format: create a series of artworks, write a piece to thread then together in a zine, and sell it at a convention. Coming into 98B’s Confluence has challenged this template, seeing my concept evolve from a collage, to a series of 3D objects, to an installation, and to push it further to performance.
I think it was fitting that this concept was part of a project that opens up the work to an external critic. Discussing my work with Marz, as well as the monthly deliberations with the group, has not only validated my concept but has pushed it further to a more coherent form. Arranging the items as Installation highlights situates them in a personal space. As I added writing embedded into one of the items (meant as a chance discovery), reciting the piece while interacting with the items lets the viewer in on how they are used.
In this work, I deliberately constructed and covered the paper items with collage to bring my own emotions forward, an attempt to let people “see” how I balanced internal pain with tangible Creature Comforts. For a new viewer, I invite them to look closer, to explore and, hopefully, to empathize with what I mean. I aim this to be their turn to find understanding.
--------
Art Critic’s Reflection on the Confluence Journey:
The Confluence Project offered me a fresh perspective on how I, as a critic, can engage with an artist's creative process. In my experience as a curator, whenever I enter a project at its early stages, my role is often limited to providing dialogue aimed at helping artists further develop their ideas or articulating their concepts to serve as an anchor for the project.
The project unfolds through five phases, excluding the initial work of a blind pairing between the artist and art critic. Initially, we were presented with all the artists’ profiles, devoid of any clues as to who they might be. Only afterward did we get to know our artist partners and gain insight into their practices, motivations, and research interests.
However, my role as an art critic has gradually evolved into that of a collaborator, with a vested interest in the artist's success. This shift, which may seem like conjecture, transforms the critic from a detached observer into an active collaborator—a second set of eyes on the artist's work. I personally felt a lingering sense of uncertainty, as there seem to be “unwritten” limits to an art critic’s responsibility to uphold the integrity of the artist’s work and the project as a whole.
This collaborative engagement allows critics to view the work through the lens of process art and places the art critic in a position where their input is also subject to critique—whether parts of the work should be edited, removed, or added. The repeated gatherings, where each artist in the program workshops their pieces with other participants and critics, provided valuable perspectives and new avenues for the artists to explore their work within the framework of relational aesthetics.
Having the opportunity to exchange ideas between the artist and critic as a pair, and then again with a group of artists and critics, and eventually with the public, is the most striking feature of this project. Each work in the program passed through this democratic process. One might wonder how much of the final work is originally by the artist and how much of it has been influenced by others. This is where our capacities as artists and art critics were truly put to the test.
Working closely with Liana, whom I met through this project, through each of the five phases has been a refreshing and enriching experience. Both of us are navigating our respective roles as artist and critic, which feels relatively new despite our continuous efforts to refine our crafts and establish ourselves as professionals in these fields.
--------------------------------
Stage 4 Text
Synthesis of Creature Comforts
Written by Marz Aglipay
Creature Comforts is an installation of everyday objects crafted from folded paper collages. Among these objects are: a journal titled "Do you think how I feel?", a set of keys named "Is this a safe space?", a medicine bottle labeled "Does this heal you too?"; a pair of shoes titled "Have you walked a mile in my shoes?"; and a blanket called "Are we cut from the same cloth?" These objects allude to comforts that contribute to the physical ease and well-being of an individual, hence its title.
Collectively, the pieces within the installation embody how pain and comfort can intertwine, a phenomenon experienced by individuals who are so used to discomfort that they must have it to feel at ease. In this context, the familiarity of pain can paradoxically offer comfort, blurring the boundaries between the two feelings.
The artist’s maximalist collages include textures of soft fabrics as an allusion to the idea of softness. This is contrasted by sharp cutouts from AI-generated images prompted by the components of the artist’s name: Liana, meaning to wrap or bind in French, and Maris, meaning sea in Latin. By Contrasting these meanings through the collage and its associated titles, its context becomes a perceptual activity.