15 - 17 September 2023

Tubô Cebu Art Fair Collaboration Project

Pepe Delfin x Yvonne Quisumbing

Pepe Delfin (b.1991, Capiz) explores abstract forms through geometric shapes and lines. The careful placements of these elements produce visual narratives of Delfin's 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'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. Delfin received her degree in Fine Arts from Ateneo de Manila University.

Yvonne Quisumbing (b.1975, Cebu) studied design and film and earned her MFA in 2020. She won local and international awards in design that gained her critical attention in the local fashion scene. Elements from her 20-year discipline honed in fashion and design carry on in her artworks albeit refracted onto recurring motifs, as could be seen in her enantiodromic representations of clothing and masks. She seeks out opposing qualities to internalize and construct wholeness, her interdisciplinary works and peaceable critical inquiries on separate systems encompassing the society.



"God does not play dice with the universe", said Albert Einstein in a statement made in 1926 in response to the fundamental idea of probability in quantum mechanics. As a determinist, he firmly believed in the physical principles of cause and effect: someone all-knowing would never leave anything to chance. Prompted by this view on natural law and quantum theory, artists Yvonne Quisumbing and Pepe Delfin worked on a collaboration piece in sculptural form. Here, painting, acrylic sheet, and wood are assembled to re-examine Einstein's statement and turn it into a question. We may find two approaches: one gives concrete explanations, and the other leaves it to fate. Delfin's calculated and precise geometrical depiction of her environment reiterates the existence of absolute and finite truths. Meanwhile, Quisumbing's realistic and ornate images bring to light many spiritual and religious groundings of Filipinos. Like two sides of a coin, these differing perspectives stand side by side– neither dominant over the other. Delicately connected through slits on the painted surfaces, this piece suggests the inevitable coexistence of fragility and balance; and intention and chance.

Curatorial text by Sayoka Takemura