No Words
ANNIE PACAÑA
December 8, 2021 - January 6, 2022
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Annie Pacaña’s (b.1978, Tacloban) practice highlights moving image works that tend to aestheticize the visual chaos in Metro Manila, where she lives. Vector line drawings from what the artist calls as linescapes are merged with kaleidoscapes---photographic abstraction that presents urban infrastructures as subjects. Pacaña received her MFA and BFA(Visual Communication) from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, where she is also a member of the faculty. For her MFA thesis, Pacaña collaborated with contemporary dance choreographers while her video works projected onto waiting sheds designed by National Artist Napoleon Abueva.
Her image projections are meant to provide a space of contemplation whether inside the gallery or in public and virtual spaces. Pacaña‘s practice forges interdisciplinary collaborations with sound art, performance, fashion, and literature. Her works had been presented at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, .Giff Festival for New Cinema, and in the exhibition “Either a Storm or a Drought” curated by Load na Dito in Vancouver, B.C. She recently received a grant from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts for Gawad Bagong Biswal.
The exhibit plays with the duality of the meaning of reflection: as a law of physics and as a thought process. Working with image projections, studying how light falls on a plane is as critical as what the work means and how the work may be viewed and interpreted. Angle of Incidence is a multi-channel video installation of views of my travels around Metro Manila. It invites the viewer to a conscious experience of stillness of watching things go by. When we are in deep thought, we focus on the surface –lost in our reflection of incidents in our lives. The wires are a recurring theme as they are a manifestation of the chaos of the city and the self.
I used to count cars passing by with my father for his feasibility studies for putting up gasoline stations. His sudden passing this year brought me back to that moment of watching cars go by and marking a line for each. A line for each that passed in front of me in a moment, until numbness sets in. What do we gain in every loss and what do we lose in every gain? I would like to think this is all a ‘feasibility study’ where we let all things possible to happen and wait and see how we grow out of it. Angle of Reflection involves a single wall projection and its multiple reflections on a pool of windshields. The abstracted image projected is a processed experience from photographs I took of wires I chanced upon laid down in an infinity loop on the street. The work presents that bewildering moment and all that I have been thru in recent years. And since we all have had experienced the pandemic in different ways, a space for grieving is in place especially for those who feel the worst had come to worse.
No matter what, we persist with all the learnings in tow. We stand and watch things go by, even when the streets have lost traffic for some time. We count the days as we count cars passing by until we hear the same pink noise of roads that lulls us back to indifference. The viewer may stay a while, watch, and reflect. A space of contemplation is offered for those who have been tested.
Text by Annie Pacaña