 I'm an artist, I'm a sculptor, and I do installations. Art is indeed a product of human experience and imagination. I'm sharing with you my creative process in the hope that you will see that art is not separated from life, whether that life is lived, and experienced, or imagined. I wrote poems and published some of them. I thought I was an artist, but I produced poems only when intensely moved or inspired. But with my visual art, my sculpture, and my installations, I work when I'm inspired. When I have a scheduled exhibit, I discipline myself to work even when I'm not inspired. I work until I feel inspired. I began working with stones after a trip to a coral island in Antique. I picked up a piece of stone and looked at it, and I looked at it, and it looked like a torso. So when I got home, I got my bolo and started working on it. Voila! I realized I could sculpt. I'm largely self-taught as a visual artist. So my early works were mainly about getting rid of my angst, which I did not realize then. So my early works were mainly about getting rid of my angst, which I did not realize then. I am moved by stories I hear, and I try to represent them in my works. This is one of my early works, The Mourners. I exhibited this in Manila. This is made of coral stone. This work was inspired by the Moque's reactions that we have, especially when there's a burial, when almost everyone would cry, would really faint from crying. This one is The Burden Bear Race, inspired by the Pieta, images of the Pieta, but it's also inspired by the caros that I see during Lent. But here I infuse an introduction of a feminist concept where the mother carries her son like a cross. This sculpture is a well-hiding. It's a work I did in my wrapped series. This was inspired by a distant relative who was so pretty, but every time suitors would come, she would be hidden by her elders inside a rice basket. This one is Lucila. This work was inspired by the first woman, Chop Chop Lady, Lucila Lalu. I heard the story of this lady who was murdered and chopped, but I didn't really know her personally, but the story kept on ringing in my mind and I was able to do a sculpture inspired by that story. This one is Hide and Seek. This was inspired by a real experience when I was a child. We played Hide and Seek and we hid inside the Patadyong and we climbed the tree and fell into the fish pond of my grandmother. So this one you see heads, feet, a foot, I think, and hands. This one I did a bus series from 1995 to 2011, but this was inspired years, years ago when I was still a student in literature and broadcasting. There was a rule during the martial law period where if your film exposes two breasts, then it's x-rated, but if it only shows one breast, then it passes the censors. So I was inspired to work on exposing the bust, the breast, but this one is my take on the bust, the bust as a sculptural form. So what I did was to twist the whole figure, rearrange them, and created a figure that looked like phalluses. And this is still part of the work which I exhibited at the CCP in 1999. And this one, of course, is still part of the bust series and you can see here that on the left side it looked like balls but on the other side it looks like a vagina. So it's about sexuality also and gender. Then these two slides, these two images show my own movement towards feminism because I was inspired to work on images of women, but the one that's titled Lourdes is inspired by a former dean and a close mentor, who died of cancer. So I goaged out the breasts to make it look spooky. The other one is inspired by Manining Miklath, who died after she fell or she intentionally dove down a building with the back of her head first. Then this sculpture titled Manining and Son was inspired by a story in the community of a mother who loved her child so much that she committed suicide with the child, bringing the child into the water because she had facial cancer, that's why the face is not seen. Then I'm still kind of haunted by the story of Lucilla Lalou so that there were other stories in the news talking about chop-chop ladies or chop-chop victims of murder. So I made another version of Lucilla in 2008, showing only parts of the body. Then Clara Bell is inspired by my classmate who had alopecia. She had big breasts but she has no hair. Then Osith is part of my Dream Women series, which I exhibited at the Allianz Francaise in 2012. But this one is inspired by the title of the show was Dream Women. So these are women who have kind of inspired me or have affected me in some way or the other. But this Osith is based on the story of Saint Osith who goes around the Abbey bringing her chopped head. Then Wawa is based on my student who was so fat, I could not imagine, she could get husband. So she was so big, so fat that I thought that on her wedding night she just wrapped herself with a blanket. So it's kind of funny but at the same time that's my take of the stories and inspirations I see when I meet people. Then this is also part of my Dream series. Mebuyan of course is a very famous character in the Manobo epics and mythology. So Mebuyan has so many breasts because she takes care of dead babies. And then Jujel is inspired by this visionary in Agoo but actually she is also transgender. But in Hiligaynon we do a ribbing with people who think of gays and then they say, oh, my putaisa dahi, so I placed a kind of a vagina on her head because not a real woman would think that and pretends to be a woman would only think that she got vaginas in her mind. And then Gertrude and Alice inspired by Gertrude Stein and her lover Alice. So I thought that they're too close and maybe they look like they're an ecstasy and I thought that forming a breast there that looked like a clitoris would kind of intimate that idea of their oneness. Judith and Holofernes is inspired of course by this apocrypal book of Judith and she was the one who beheaded Holofernes. So here is Judith sort of exhibiting ecstatic feelings while holding the head of Holofernes. And then in 1999 I had my first exhibition at the CCP. This was inspired by my bust series and I did an installation there of mirrors and profiles as well as my sculptures. So on the floor I also scattered parts of the breasts. So it's about sexuality. The funny thing about this is when they tried to make comments on the guest book, the Filipinos said, oh puro titi, but the foreigners thought, it's great. So you can see the variation in terms of reaction of audiences. When I was doing my residency in Vermont Studio Center, I was kind of hearing stories about American lives ruined by divorce. I have several friends who are divorcee or her parents are divorced and so I thought that America was fragmented. And I did a series on fragmentary states. This is an exhibit titled Fragmentary States and I use it to, I use the marble sculptures and they look like ruins. And then I use also soil to scatter the sculptures that I made. And then when I was doing graduate work in fine arts, I got some courses in fine arts. I had some projects and this one is refreshing memories. I thought of the fishermen who would try to keep their fish fresh by putting ice on them. So I use the images of my family, pictures and memories and then put ice on them and then they look distorted. So the idea there is the more you try to refresh your memory, the more distorted they become. And then when I was young, I thought that haircuts are really awful sessions and I would cry a lot. So I did an installation called Haircut. I went to the barbershop, had my haircut and then I looked at all my baby photos and then cut up the upper part and then shredded them. Because haircuts, I really realized, were very important to children as far as their self-identity is concerned. This particular installation tried to capture that. Eventually, when exhibited this in Manila, one child played around it. And even the caretaker thought, patay na ba yung bata jan? He said, that's me. So they thought it's about death. And then I did this installation also titled Nude so that when you see clothes scattered on the floor or somewhere else, you think that the guy must have been naked somewhere or the person must have been naked somewhere. So what I did was I took my old Levi's jeans, my underwear and all my shirt and then put them on the floor and then exhibited them also in a gallery. Because the nude is not what we see but it's what is in our mind. Then I did Salt Bed. Salt Bed is my take on punishments did on children years ago. They're made to kneel in Mungo or they're made to kneel in salt. So what I did was to create a kind of installation. I bought several kilos of salt and then I used my own blanket which I used in my own boarding house. And then I just created a kind of bed, a literal take on the salt bed. But that's how I imagined the difficulty and unease you feel when lying on something that is not usually comfortable. And I also did a little bit of performance by lying on the bed itself. And then reduction. Reduction is about how we are reduced to ashes eventually when we all die. So before I had the fear of dying but after some time I got over it. But I realized that with the popularity of cremation how much will I be reduced in terms of cups of ashes. And so what I did was I went to an app and then I saw that with my weight I could only be about 12 cups. But what I did was to use ordinary charcoal ash which I asked my father to take to Manila so I could put it in my project. So that's me. I tried also to do a little bit of performance alongside my own installation. And then aboyaboy is about a cradle improvised cradle used in most rural homes. And I thought of the Japanese story where babies are bi-united, thrown to the air. And so I thought of putting a malong, hang it like a cradle, improvised cradle and then put a knife under it. This has been shown also in a gallery but I want really to do a large scale installation of this one eventually. Then of course I was also trying to play with the Filipinas pension for drinking themselves to death when they're broken hearted. So I used Red Horse Beer which is the strongest beer there is in the Philippines. And then I put up an installation which I literally titled Broken Heart. So what I did was to gather pieces of Red Horse Beer and then broke them and then just formed the heart there. I did an installation of this in also another gallery. Then the Virgin is an installation I did based on the poem of my friend the Virgin. In essence, the Virgin is about preserving yourself for your man or your woman. But I thought virginity is not only for women but it's also for men. So that's why the installation is kind of phallic to a certain extent. And when I exhibited this one in a gallery they were kind of clamoring. It looked like it's sacrilegious, it's bad influence because there's blood or kind of a suggestion of blood over there. And there was this guy looking at it so they thought that they want to take it down. But I said it's not about sex at all, it's about even preserving yourself. And then I did Forgotten Painting. So what I did when I got home, I tried to paint a large canvas in our beach cottage and then eventually set up an installation Forgotten Painting. And this was exhibited also in a gallery but it's also about artists who are forgotten and have never received recognition. And maybe there's studios you know just cluttered with paintings or artworks that have never been exhibited. Abortion of flight is a funny, funnily inspired piece because every time we go use the national highway there are road kills and I thought that a lot of chickens are killed along the road. But it's also a kind of a metaphor for our dreams. So when we wanted to fly but our flight is aborted. And then eventually when this was exhibited in a gallery people were stepping on it. So there's a kind of action because they thought that these are just feathers. I just used chicken feathers here. And then shedding. Shedding is of course using also chicken feathers. I did an installation of this exhibit that is in Magnet Gallery in a group show. This is about trying to unravel ourselves and I realized that only sick chickens shed their feathers. So that's the work as installed in Magnet Gallery before. And then I'm also inspired by children's games. Especially the ones that you know would require drawing on the sand. I live by the beach and most of us you know would play in the sand and then we would draw on the sand. And so I did an installation titled Arena. So this is the way I set up the exhibition in the UP Art Gallery. So it's also about memories and so there's an overlapping of the drawings that we you know would draw on the sand as we play games like Jose Jose Comansi and Inns or Barrol in our own language in Hili Gainon. And also Tin Tin Baka which is hopscotch in English. So this is the finished product of that one. And that's me with my dad in the installation. And there were also people who tried to play in the gallery when they saw the drawings on the sand. I used white sand and brown sand. Then catch. Catch was something I did in UPV. It's about the futility of fishing when fisherman you know would engage in communal fishing but all they get is stone. So I just hang stones on the net itself. This is an actual net. But I realized there are aesthetic also shapes that were formed as you hang the net. And then I did do yankanang magitting. Do yankanang magitting. But this one I used the title Cradle of Noble Heroes from the Americanized version of our National Anthem. So do yankanang magitting is also about UPV but it's also about how UPV has become the cradle of heroic people. But you know that LGBT flag was just coincidental because when I did that installation it was in November when they had that flag hanging there in the ablation. So that's another view of do yankanang magitting. I just used hammocks. So I used available materials and then tried to create new meanings from these. And then I also doubled in steel but what I did was to cut steel. When I was in the States I worked in steel but because of the scarcity of the equipment in the Philippines and I did not invest in a cutter. So I had to look for several years for a steel works company who can cut the material for me and I was able to find one. And so I was able to create works and I titled the exhibition Penetrations in Steel Mask. It's about multiple personalities but one makes use of simple cutting like you cut a piece of paper and form several figures from it. So I made an installation of this exhibition. Your movements are reflected in the wallbound pieces which are all made of clear stainless steel materials, reflective. So you have here a vision of people watching the gallery even as you capture only one angle. So the idea there is that when we meet people we are actually meeting several other people and we are seeing several other sides of ourselves like you don't only have a single personality. As you meet people you exhibit the different personalities that you have. Recently in 2017 I did an exhibition well my broken heart series continued so I did my broken heart meets your heart of stone. So I did two big hearts, one made of broken beer bottles and the other one made of stone and that's the whole figure eventually. Lastly in Singapore I did the circle of broken hearts still continuing with my broken heart series. This time they don't have beer so they had wine so what I did was to create a circle of sorts using the broken wine and shaping hearts from it. It's an idea of sad people meeting other sad people. I love to think a lot and rationalize. I like reading and listening to ideas. My installations are expansions of the ideas I am attentive to. So I hope you learned from my sharing today.