PAT HOFFIE, The committee(Top Photo). AUSTRALIAN Ambassador(Left Photo) Rod Smith (center), Ateneo de Manila University president Fr. Bienvenido Nebres (left) and artist Pat Hoffie at the opening of Under My Skin. AUSTRALIAN artist(Right Photo) Tony Twigg views Emil Goh’s Double Parking Pillows (2008).

PEOPLE are, by nature, creatures of habit. We like doing things a certain way: a favored brand of toothpaste, a preferred cologne, a familiar route to work, that favorite soap opera at eight, and bedtime after a riveting tale. So ingrained are we in our sense of routine—our sense of comfort—that we just can’t help but admire the few individuals who veer away from this norm. Five such individuals have chosen and, likewise, been chosen to participate in the journey known as Under My Skin. 

Under My Skin is a traveling exhibit celebrating the works of five distinguished artists from Australia through the Asialink’s Arts residency program at the University of Melbourne, in collaboration with the Australian Embassy in Manila and the Ateneo de Manila University. The university is hosting the exhibit until June 27 before it leaves for Singapore and then to Vietnam.

Art residencies are programs where an artist is living and practicing their craft in an area outside their usual circumstances while being supported by a host organization, something that the Asialink Arts residency program is a huge believer in having helped over 500 artists traverse 20 countries in its 17-year history.

The five Australian artists on view are Emil Goh, Louise Paramor, Meagan Keating, Pat Hoffie and David Griggs, with the last two taking their residency in the Philippines.

The exhibit itself is one of wonder, and the pieces try their best to reflect the personal experiences of each artist while infusing the works with the cultural experiences of the host country.

David Griggs’s photographs enthrall the eyes with their bright colors contrasting with his favored themes that focus on the menacing characters which comprise Manila’s gang culture. There’s Emil Goh, whose preoccupation with nature and urban living found an irresistible affinity with the South Korean capital of Seoul. Here, he was apparently drawn to their day-to-day culture, which he captures for posterity.

Pat Hoffie, a painter who also took her residency in the Philippines, was present during the exhibit’s launch and spoke briefly to the BusinessMirror about her work. Looking every inch the artist in unrelieved black, Hoffie was deep, insightful and thoroughly down-to-earth in discussing her work.

The first room of the exhibit is clearly dominated by her work, Madame Illuminata’s Crack’s Pictorial Guide to the Universe, which is a set of 10 paintings that took over five years to complete.

A contemporary artist who believes that “one should understand history in order to understand the present,” Hoffie easily translates the country’s history in this series of paintings.

Images of snakes, eagles and the Virgin Mary in seemingly ordinary scenes adorn several of the pictures alluding to our “continuing” colonial past and strong religious ties. They also reflect the Filipino seeming duality, perhaps even schizophrenia, with regards to religion.

All the paintings are dotted sparsely but conspicuously with large pink dots, giving credence to American modernism—this is, after all, an exhibit of contemporary artworks.

Hoffie displays another playful side with her work called The Committee, a collection of nine dolls whose heads, arms and legs are made of papier-mâché, fur and fabric, while the bodies are fashioned from the cardboard boxes of soap bars and sardines.

Her reasons for choosing the Philippines for her residency are numerous. Apart from the obvious religious and cultural dynamics, there are the contradictions, “the craziness and chaos,” the political stunts that run like “soap [operas],” and—most important—the passion and commitment of Philippine artists. She believes it is the artist’s responsibility to document the times through art, to absorb the movements, the culture of the moment, and somehow reflect these into one’s art.

“We can only truly understand a certain period of time, of history, by looking at all aspects, including the art that emerged from this particular time,” she said.

Indeed, we sometimes get too caught up in our own lives, our ambitions, that we often forget that we share the same aspirations with billions of others. Seeing the guests at the opening of the exhibit greet and embrace Hoffie as if she were family, it becomes evident that Asialink’s motives for sending artists around the world run deeper than merely getting their artists to produce unique works. It’s about making the world a smaller place and, in doing so, possibly getting people under one another’s skin once in a while.  

***The exhibit is currently housed at the Ateneo Art Gallery, ground floor, Rizal Library, Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Philippines.

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