Where the wild things grow
Stepping into Artinformal after torrential afternoon rains, the sudden light and color of their ground-floor exhibition, “Where Vines Grow Wild,” gusts in like a breath of fresh air. The group exhibition was put together by visual artist Johanna Helmuth, who recalls coming across an abandoned property covered in vines, where the plants had climbed over gates, walls, and electric wires. These vines had taken over everything in their path, and it was an image she couldn’t shake.
Getting together friends and fellow artists, they mounted their works together to create a show tangled up in their expressions of growth.
Growing in all directions
The exhibition takes its cue from Zoraya Lua’s poem, an excerpt of which reads, “vines grow wild / from soils that have tenderly / witnessed decay/ in nature and the everyday / the death of the old, / the timely loss / of what was once held dear / – these are the substrates / for life itself.”
This primal force of vines that push through concrete and thicket, bringing air back to roots, runs throughout the exhibit. For Helmuth, it clearly appeared in each artists’ thinking in their individual practices.
Li Cabangis’ work translates human evolution into interconnected PVC and PPR pipes. In “Oh, Would You Look at That?”, the pale pipes intersect and misalign, forming a dense three-dimensional network that suggests the many directions a life can take. The multicolored “A Blip on the Road,” meanwhile takes the form of a bench, introducing the possibility of rest after all that movement.
The idea of movement is tactile in Indya Gokita’s undeniably beautiful textile works, “Headwaters, Coursing” and “A Glade as a Cocoon,” as vibrant layers of fabric and thread poetically reflect the textured layers of memory and experience.
Then there’s Neen Cabangis’ “Evidence of Existence,” which shows individually cut pieces of colorful materials arranged on round acrylic sheets, which appear like specimens on petri dishes. “Her work tells us that a person can never be fully reduced to a single identity,” Helmuth reflects. “Each person has different layers and versions… Beneath the weight of living, a person remains intricate and rare… different souls, personas, people.”
Traces of becoming
Mars Bugaoan’s work strays a little differently from his work that we know, where he uses media like plastic and found objects. Instead, he works with printmaking. His 12 monoprints show a silhouette of a figure, titled “The Wild Within.” They show what he calls misprints over the years of his practice, which he associates with inner growth, layered with years of mark-making and accumulated experience.
Helmuth’s own “The Weight of Desire” draws from the myth of Daphne and Apollo. In the story, desire becomes something impossible to contain, eventually transforming Daphne into a laurel tree. Here, the vine’s tendency to grow and consume becomes a metaphor for complicated longing and the ways desire can overwhelm us.
Keith Dador translates the idea of the vine into a unique kind of movement. A professional photographer, he takes a photo of a long line of people waiting outside the National Museum, turning the queue itself into a path. He asks the question: “Does this upward movement lead to genuine knowledge and discovery or will it impose an institution-approved spectacle?”
Meanwhile, Rozelle Dador’s “Static” brings the metaphor back to “the flow of desire and beauty of a woman’s body,” Helmuth explains. “Which is impossible to contain.” Through photographic manipulation, the woman’s body becomes totally abstracted into fluid monochrome hues.
Lua’s work goes on to solidify the idea of roots, literally capturing “Shadows of Trees Along EDSA” in poignant c-prints. While her sculpture “Traces of Removed Roots” touches on memory, showing the imprints of removed roots. “Even in death there is continuity,” Helmuth says.
Where the path leads to light
While all the works pull you in, it’s Aaron Cabangis’ “Further Down the River” that might pull you into the gallery first, as it’s the first thing you see entering the gallery. A large vine-like structure threaded with a bright yellow light, its vines have no obvious beginning or end, just its bright center offering a sense of direction. During installation, Helmuth remembers everyone being drawn toward it, gathering around like moths drawn to light.
Next to it is his “Dappled Sunlight,” another installation that shows nylon string hanging beneath a pin light, creating the impression of rain in a delicate, almost weightless work.
There are many unexpected pleasures in “Where Vines Grow Wild.” Although the exhibition’s starting point came from decay and the unruly force of nature, it’s clear that each artist was pulled toward something more hopeful, straying on different paths that allowed for detours and pauses.
As Helmuth puts it, even when we fail, become entangled, or find ourselves somewhere unexpected: “There is always another path to make or another path to take.”
“Where Vines Grow Wild” runs from July 30 to Aug. 29 at Artinformal Gallery, Karrivin Plaza, Chino Roces Ext. Makati City
