
26 July - 27 September 2025
A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers
Pepe Delfin
Probing the communicative exigencies of trauma, Pepe Delfin deploys her dexterity with geometric abstraction in “A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers”. Informed by trauma-informed care, a healthcare framework that recognizes its pervasive impact and seeks to prevent retraumatization of the individual, the artist extends her explorations of non-illusionistic elements to probe the experience, articulation, and resistance to emotional distress. Here, abstraction becomes a conduit—neither purely evasive nor decorative, but one that conscientiously reckons with the often-silenced registers of pain.
The exhibition’s title is derived from the three key metaphors in American author Mary Oliver’s poem, The Kookaburras. It organizes the collection, consisting of both wall-bound and sculptural works, into three thematic parts that situate them between the notions of confinement and freedom. In Part I: A Cage, Delfin approximates the encounter of trauma and apprehends this in terms of common objects: a parasite, broken glass, a shadow, and a tomb, her use of mundane forms alluding to its ubiquity and how it manifests in familiar expressions.
Part II: A Bird examines its psychosomatic registers. Consistent with the artist’s experimentations with perspective, the compositions in this section mark efforts to alter and obfuscate the painterly viewpoint. This visual strategy parallels the imprints of trauma to the body, for instance, in the way it disrupts one’s cognitive and physical functions.
Finally, the exhibition concludes on a defiant tenor in Part III: A God of Flowers. This final section distills the idea of healing through motifs that suggest community, movement, and beginning. The artist describes this as “a diffident insistence on a resolution”, acknowledging the emancipatory possibility of reprieve in its different forms. Veering away from a linear approach to the narrative, she presents healing not as a fixed endpoint, but as a process always within our reach.
In the context of the present show, Delfin’s language of geometric abstraction reflects an attempt at measured articulation. Anatomizing lived experiences by breaking down line, color, and shape emerges as an act of circumlocution or careful dialogue. Such strategies come from her own experiences of trauma as a woman and from the stories of survivors of gender-based violence through her work with feminist organizations. They elucidate the challenges that survivors confront when speaking about grave emotional distress; in consciously avoiding explicit representation, the artist foregrounds the importance of speaking without retraumatizing both the subject and viewer.
All told, Delfin transforms mathematical optics into signifiers of somatic and psychological wounds. Such technique stands as a gesture of care—an avowal of compassion and sensitivity amid this relentlessly moving world driven by the culture of urgency. By presenting alternative ways of articulating the complexities of trauma, she moves beyond mere portrayals of its forms and ramifications but, more crucially, asserts hopes of healing and release.
Text by Chesca Santiago
Public program for A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers is co-presented with Lunas Collective
Pepe Delfin (Born 1991 in Capiz, Philippines; Lives and works in Manila)
Exploring abstract forms through geometric shapes and lines, Delfin’s careful placement of elements produces visual narratives of experiences, observations, and relationships with people and contemporary life. Her paintings, illustrations, and video installations include scenarios that depict solitude and the multitude of expressions through bright colors and structures as a form of expression, unbounded by traditional forms of image-making.
Delfin is influenced by Josef and Anni Albers' studies and theories on color, where color is never singular and always presents itself in continuous fluxes, constantly linked to the changes in environment and conditions. Delfin's approach to geometrical abstraction broadens the perspective one can take in portraying reality according to the artist's observation and perception. The non-illusionistic settings found in her works prompt a realm filled with cues that engage the viewers to form their understanding of images, meanings, and realities.
Selected Works from A Bird, A Cage, A God of Flowers
