02.27.07 art review

Material girl

If there is anything that the Fine Arts Program of UP Cebu is vaunted for it is its being the bastion of the mixed media practice in the local visual arts scene. And this has become even more entrenched in the last few years.

This has made some, – let's call them the sipra school of art -- to conclude – often snidely – that this has developed at the expense of technical facility in drawing, which, is not entirely the case, and, which, in any case, these mixed media artists – the sobra pa school -- would exclaim, is not the only point of art. Of, at least, their art.

Yet, every once in a while, comes a student whose work twits the presumptions of the sipraists and, while supporting the other school, also shows them that facility in or even mastery of drawing does not necessarily detract from the entire point of art but can, in fact, compliment it quite effectively.

Anchoring her work in portraiture, mostly of herself, Eloise Daniot deftly mixes her facility with oil portraiture – the gold standard of the sipraists – with mix media of a material that few of her fellow mix-media artists, student or professional, have explored or even considered.

Currently on exhibit and running till the end of the month at the Bluewater Gallery, Maribago Bluewater Beach Resort, in Mactan, 'Hulagway (Multiple Exposure)' is Daniot's thesis exhibit.

The show, somewhat sparse with just 9 works is contained only in the main gallery room where other previous exhibits spilled out into other spaces, mostly within the main restaurant across this gallery room.

Yet, this sparseness is the correct intuitive set-up of gallery operator-cum-curator, Vic Vergara. This is more than made up for by the studied intricacy and the plethora of both visual content, mostly biographical, and physical material, mostly related to textile and jewelry accessories.

There is just enough to keep us from becoming overwhelmed and, more importantly, maintains our sense of intimacy that Daniot tries to initiate with her intensely personal, even confessional explorations of her multiple roles, identities and challenges as a woman; single mother, recovering lover, career focused person and daughter.

Central to all the works are self-portraits in oil with clothes that are, in some, also painted, but in others with more elaborate clothing though only its front side. This is then surrounded by other painted or illustrated images and an intricate layer of cloth, objects – mainly fashion jewelry accessories -- and textile work related to quilting, appliquéing, and, in one work, a technique appropriated from a fellow accessories designer, using the soldering iron to create non-edge burning holes on cloth.

It is immediately apparent that Daniot is an experienced textile hand. That she sews clothes of her own design – for her exclusively use, for now – helps. But, it is with the fashion accessories that one appreciates her discipline that balances the necessary audacity, required balance and sought for practicality that lends her works its singular mark.

This has also catapulted her into the ranks of the successful in this extremely competitive, faddish and copycat industry. She has twice been adjudged among the top ten finalists in the Philippine Fashion Design Competition in the accessories category in 2005 and 2006/07.

This success is what we would somehow expect from somebody whose trajectory to the arts and design is from ambitions to become either a lawyer or a doctor, via a year in a medical technology course in pursuit, finally, though aborted, of the latter and a successful study of the violin.

This is also seen in her self-assured confidence in her works and in person.

Yet, what is also striking is how in many of her self-portraits, she is looking from a somewhat lower vantage point. She is looking slightly upwards, in a defensive manner, as if expecting the worse.

Listening to her story one sees her attempt to tell it in her art, but also, one realizes that she has more to say and that there is more angst beyond what amounts to pretty and extremely creative pictures that are in themselves not a problem unless they turn out to be just more masks. Yet, as the paradox of masks go, they might really be telling the truth. But, perhaps, more about us than the wearer. Thus, her hulagway, is ours as well.