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| Text by Patricia Tumang | Immersing herself in a variety of media, artist Lyra Garcellano navigates across multiple contexts and materials to craft narratives about home, identity, and the self. |
The video begins with a series of questions: “When you imagine the home you wish for, does it imagine you back? If you were to walk across the horizon, would you be able to find what you are looking for?” The white text flashes against a black screen, interspersed with artist Lyra Garcellano’s voice and footage of a bucolic horizon set in either Bacolod or France, where the artist has traveled. In many of her works, such as this video entitled “Sweep” (2014) – shown in her solo exhibition of the same title at Finale Art File in 2014 – Garcellano draws from her personal experiences and herself as subject to investigate concepts related to identity, power, home, diaspora, and mobility.
In her video works, the questions she poses are often lyrical and rhetorical. For Garcellano, who is conceptually driven, (meta)phors reign supreme, as does text, since she comes from a family of writers. Her experimental artistic process – and her narration and interpretation of it – informs her journey and the form that it takes, which spans from painting, installation, video, photography to comics.
In her video works, the questions she poses are often lyrical and rhetorical. For Garcellano, who is conceptually driven, (meta)phors reign supreme, as does text, since she comes from a family of writers. Her experimental artistic process – and her narration and interpretation of it – informs her journey and the form that it takes, which spans from painting, installation, video, photography to comics.
Dear Artist (detail shot)
In videos such as “Sweep” (2014) and “Dear Artist” (2015) – also the name of her current solo exhibition at Finale Art File – Garcellano has blurred the lines between narrator and subject as she poses questions to her audience about what it means to not belong, whether in the art world or at home, wherever that may be. These dual personas of the private and public Garcellano establish an innate tension that sets the stage for the artist to grapple with the nuances of identity and also the boundary between herself and her audience.
“It is easy to say that one shouldn’t care about the audience when one works. I can pretend to be nonchalant about my process and say: ‘I don’t care about what others say.’ But, of course, I do. I care because these works are important to me and their personal significance is based on whether I am able to relay my message across,” says Garcellano.
“It is easy to say that one shouldn’t care about the audience when one works. I can pretend to be nonchalant about my process and say: ‘I don’t care about what others say.’ But, of course, I do. I care because these works are important to me and their personal significance is based on whether I am able to relay my message across,” says Garcellano.
Read the complete article inside Art+ issue 40. Art+ Magazine is available in all leading bookstores nationwide. For a complete list of where Art+ Magazine can be purchased click here.
IMAGES COURTESY OF FINALE ART FILE and the artist.
IMAGES COURTESY OF FINALE ART FILE and the artist.
