PAIR 6
Mikmakdo & Monica Fernandez
Artist
Kim Macdon, an artist and designer from Marinduque, centers his works on images of nostalgia, intimacy, love, and loss associated with growing up in the province. He draws inspiration from observations of the shared experience of rural life and believes that material culture, history, and nature are key elements of reestablishing a connection with the past. He attempts to push the boundaries in his practice by adopting an interdisciplinary approach, specifically between anthropology, healthcare, and visual communication.
This is represented in his painterly and illustrative works by the way he uses warm, desaturated colors with textured brush strokes and lines. In contrast, he views his sculpture as a culture bearer of life from the region, which is shown in his fondness of hand-building techniques and the delicate forms he creates.
The artist views creating art as a means of remembering and immortalizing life. Using both collaborative and personal memory as a guide, he creates art as a form of love letter and homage to help him make sense of the world.
He has built these pillars from his bachelor’s degree in the UP College of Fine Arts, majoring in Visual Communication and has graduated with distinction.
Art Critic
Monica Fernandez (b. 1995, Manila), first realized she wanted to work in art while taking an art appreciation class at the University of Asia and the Pacific. Her first job in art was for a local auction house, where she worked in marketing, writing copy for social media and web and organizing events and auctions for three years.
She pursued her MA in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art London, where she was first exposed to art historical writing for Southeast Asia from non-Filipinos like T.K. Sabapathy, Eugene Tan, Joan Kee, and Annie Jael Kwan to name a few. She’s always on the lookout for art that inspires her and is particularly interested in writing about research-based art (art as forms of knowledge production), which is why, for her MA thesis, she wrote about the archive-based work of Pio Abad, Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. She currently works in marketing at a local museum.
Stage 0
Conceptualization, Portfolio Review, & Artist Interview
The artist provides a brief description of the concept they intend to explore or develop for Confluence.
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Notes on initial concept
Written by Mikmakdo
The core concept of my work revolves around processing grief of a Filipino grandparent. I envision it as an installation that resembles a typical dining area in a Filipino household. The visual narrative and elements would play around objects found in Filipino funerals and burials (bingo cards, cadena de amor flower, etc.) and visual markers in personal memories with my grandmother (food, table mantle, textiles, etc.). A painting centerpiece at the wall would be made mounted that narrates the sweet and somber feeling of remembering loved ones. I want the audience to be able to interact with the table set-up, take a seat at the table and put themselves in the position of how remembering grief comes at random places (in this case, at the dining table). I imagine the colors to still be relatively near the colors that I use: warm tones with desaturated pinks, purple and blue colors. Conceptual influences would be FIlipino household and food culture as well as our funeral and burial customs. Artistic influences for this would be Langit, Luhat, Laway Luha exhibition of Tokwa Penaflorida (2022), and Kutob exhibition of Hubineer (2022).
Grief is such a heavy emotion to deal with. Sometimes, it even takes a lifetime to process. I think we Filipinos have our way of processing it as well, through our culture, customs, and traditions. I want the audience to perceive the work as a reflection of our culture and absorb the spectrum of joy and sadness and anger everything in between that comes with the passing of a loved one. In this work, I want to explore and unpack these feelings through a mixed media painting as a dining area centerpiece and whole dining area installation. For the table installation, I am looking at sewing or crocheting for textile parts and sculptural/carving or assemblages for other objects. I feel like touching on different mediums, both 2D and 3D would recreate that atmospheric feeling.
My grandmother, who passed away in 2021, has been the primary influence in this particular concept. She has been a pillar to my identity and the appreciation that I have for my culture and upbringing in Marinduque. Her passing has made me reflect deeply on life and love, and the process of grief comes and goes. This work would serve as a significant culmination of my skills so far as an artist and push the limits on how I express my ideas and feelings through art. Grief and love are both universal and personal. In this work, I want to explore these images and feelings both in a public sense and at the same time, a sense that is uniquely Filipino and personal to my encounters with it. In the dining installation work that I will be making, I want to explore and evoke feelings of remembering a loved one both in its beauty and gritty side. Through the use of different mediums and texture, I want to parallel the atmosphere of being loved and having to grieve.
I am making this work as part of my own journeying in process of the passing of my grandmother and how remembering a passed loved one entails facing gargantuan feelings that we sometimes tend to push at the backs of our minds. By interacting with the work and taking part in the installation by sitting by the table, I hope that I’ll also take part in the audience’s processing of their own love and grief in life. I hope that people could contemplate on their respective public experience with love and grief and at the same time see through my lens as an artist and my personal recollections and experience. I hope that being able to sit at the dining installation work would help them contemplate how they loved, grieved and come up with their own reflections to expand the meaning of the work.
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.
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About Mikmakdo
Written by Monica Fernandez
One can get intimidated when faced with too much possibility–it’s the fear of the blank page or the anxiety caused by a sentence that trails off. This challenge of making decisions–deciding what exactly one wants to say–is something artists face regularly as they trek through their individual practice, finding and honing their voice.
For Mikmakdo, a recent graduate of Visual Communications from the UP Fine Arts program, he faces this sea of possibility head on by experimenting with different mediums. His portfolio covers sculpture, watercolor, mixed media, digital art, and even film.
This diversity of mediums can perhaps be explained when one takes into account the thematic thread that runs through Mikmakdo’s work. He constantly seeks new ways to portray the Filipino experience and his extensive experimentation is indicative of how rich and nuanced his subject matter is.
The meat of his works draws on his personal experience living between Manila and his province of Marinduque, where he grew up close to his grandparents. His digital painting “Paghubog” (2020) for example, captures the warmth of the Pinoy home, from accumulated bric-a-brac to the religious and family images covering the walls. The tight curls and pained expression of his sculpture “Elehiya ng Ninakawan ng Puso” (2022) are suggestive of “santos”–religious imagery that most Filipinos grew up around.
It’s in this intersection between personal and communal Filipino experience that Mikmakdo seems to be trying to create a space for himself and it will be exciting to see how this space develops.
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.
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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.
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Stage 1 Artwork
Potrait Study 1
Mikmakdo
Watercolor and soft pastel on paper
6"x8"
Artist Statement:
In this artwork, I wanted to unravel how my idea of remembering a grandparent could be translated visually in its form, medium, composition, and subject. This specific study aims to explore the intimacy and feelings that a portaiture could evoke. I wanted to capture the hazy atmosphere of a dream of someone you lost—familiar, metaphysical,distant. I used watercolor due to the fluid nature of the medium and soft pastel, for its ability to make soft glow. The subject in this piece is heavily inspired by my accounts of remembering my grandmother. I recall still feeling her presence in different places in our home. Ultimately, although this piece is personal, I hope to visualize that feeling of longing for a loved one who has passed away.
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Stage 1 Text
Work-in-Progress (WIP) Analysis of Portrait Study 1
In his compilation of reflections on the nature of grief, C.S. Lewis writes that in grief, “[n]othing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs [...] Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?”
This complex, murky emotion is the main theme of Mikmakdo’s exploration of personal and cultural forms of grief. His work in progress is an installation of a traditional Filipino dining setup: a long table bisecting the space, connecting two chairs, above which will hang two portraits. The first will be of him and the second, facing it, will be of his grandmother who passed in 2021.
In the portrait study, Mikmakdo presents the back of a woman’s head in soft pastel watercolor, her face turned away from the viewer at a three-fourths angle, providing a glimpse of her profile and evoking the feeling of a memory fading away. The artist recalls still feeling his grandmother’s presence around their home, an experience similar to how Lewis describes his wife’s absence to be “like the sky, spread over everything.”
Mikmakdo’s choice to begin his studies with an intimate portrait of his grandmother sets the tone for a highly personal work, but there is still room to explore how the personal intersects with the communal. What are characteristics of grief that Filipinos share? How do we as a society signal that we are grieving?
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 2 Artwork
Habilin sa Naiwan 1
Mikmakdo
Watercolor on paper
8.3x11.7 in.
Stage 2 Artwork
Habilin sa Naiwan 2
Mikmakdo
Watercolor on paper, everyday object
7x12 in.
Artist Statement:
The feedback has supported the direction of a FIlipino dining table installation as a way to explore grief for departed loved ones. It opens up richness in exploration and has the opportunity to include personal accounts of others about grief. However, to do this would be difficult given my limited capabilities. I thought of resolving this through accounts of grief from family members as a way to still explore the personal, shared, communal experience of FIlipino grief. Habilin sa Naiwan 1 & 2 are watercolor pieces rooted in memories and food, both capturing the shared and communal FIlipino experience. This is part of the wall pieces with the dining table installation, where you can sit down with grief and set the table for conversations and reflections to happen. I tried to depict the images abstractly as a way to capture how nostalgia and memorializing feels like. I also started exploring presentations (using frames from household objects) and plan on exploring other mediums for the objects atop the table. Sitting down with grief is taxing in on its own. But, this both helps me deal with it and recall the value of remembering fondly.
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Stage 2 Text
Work-in-Progress (WIP) Analysis with Review of Related Work or Literature of Habilin sa Naiwan 1 & 2
Written by Monica Fernandez
Grief in the Filipino Ethos
In a piece written for Sunday Plus magazine (1989), artist-critic Rod Paras-Perez attributed the enduring quality of the Dagohoy Rebellion (1744-1829)--one of the longest rebellions in Philippine history–to its touching on “the indio Filipino’s deep-seated ethos which mandated reverence for the dead.” Paras-Perez then described burial and mourning traditions across different indigenous groups in pre-Hispanic Philippines, claiming that while “Philippine reverence for their departed kin is […] almost as varied as our vaunted 7,000 islands, more so in the distant past […] They are cultural values moderated or muted. But they persist somehow […]”
It wouldn’t be a stretch of the modern Filipino’s imagination to draw connections between grieving customs today and those practiced in Benguet and Ifugao, where “dining, drinking and dancing were ways of honoring the dead” or even in Hispanic Philippines, where “the wake remained a clan and community affair with mourners crying and relating the departed’s past life.”
While Paras-Perez could have ended his informative piece by bringing the discussion back to the Dagohoy rebellion, he instead imparts a final challenge to the reader: “This is our deeply rooted value. The question is whether we always have the courage of our virtue.”
Personal and Communal Grief
This idea of courage is pertinent to the discussion of Mikmakdo’s work in progress: an installation that participates in this centuries-old tradition of remembering the dead. From the beginning of the collaboration, Mikmakdo has made it clear that the work would be rooted in traditional Filipino values and traditions–hence the dining table setup being the focal point of the installation, because the dining room remains the convening point in the Filipino home. It is here that conversations take place and typical social roles–i.e. father, mother, daughter, son, sister, brother–are acted out. There’s also the fact that his memories of his grandmother revolve around activities in the home: cooking and sitting down together to eat.
At this stage in the process, Kim is experimenting with different media to make the objects placed on the table. Just as in a typical home, he envisions a hodgepodge of foods, personal items, and decor placed on the table, almost as if a balikbayan box had been emptied on top of it. Some of these objects will have direct links to the practice of holding wakes in the Philippines, others will reference the Filipino penchant for hoarding personal belongings of the deceased for sentimental–or even practical–reasons.
Mikmakdo is now faced with the challenge of being able to balance the “universal experiences of death and dying” with the “deeply individual nature of the experience” as described by curator Travis Curtin in the group show “One foot on the ground, one foot in the water” (Pinnacles Gallery, 2023). Kim’s installation brings two seemingly contradicting elements into play: the personal act of processing grief, and the communal act of sharing it. And while the personal aspect of the work may be more readily apparent to viewers (i.e. seeing it as his personal form of grieving) it is more challenging to set the installation up in such a way that individual reflection naturally arises. After all, the point of grief is that it can’t be rushed or prompted by an outside force.
To bridge the leap from personal to communal, several options were considered: including a directory where viewers could sign their names (as one would find in most Filipino wakes), crowd-sourcing personal items to include in the installation, or even incorporating prompts somehow into the piece to get people to engage. Ultimately, all of them were scrapped because they would have undermined the very purpose of the work: to create a communal space where people can safely process their own experiences of grief.
Greater than the Sum of its Parts
As a writer witnessing this work unfold, it is easy to read and appreciate Kim’s intention in its different parts. I have to constantly remove myself from the work and picture it as it would be experienced by a stranger. Barthes’ essay comes into special play here and his words "The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” come to mind. For all the power he places with the Reader, I would argue that due to the nature of Mikmakdo’s work, taking the Author’s biography and experience as a starting point for their reading of it could prove to enrich their experience of his work for viewers. In other words, the work has the potential to be even greater than the sum of its parts.
References:
Barthes, R (trans. S Heath). "The death of the author." Image, music, text (1977): 142-148. PDF.
Miekus, T. “Artists on grief, mourning and loss.” Artguide. Retrieved 13 March 2024. https://artguide.com.au/artists-on-grief-mourning-and-loss/
Paras-Perez, R. “Our deadly dead: Pas encore Dagohoy?” Sunday Plus. 29 October 1989. PDF.
Stage 3