In the artist’s hands, the answer could be interpreted visually. One could even go far into claiming that the artist has no choice but to see himself or herself, foremost, as the average citizen, as an inconsequential player or character in some scene that is bound to unfold. The artist has no choice but to establish his relationship to a world he has imagined or seen. And this relationship can come in many forms.

 

The Unknown Citizen is a group exhibition featuring contemporary artists working in the Philippines whose subject and vision in their works evoke a sense of setting and character. Focusing on works that explore the idea of the ‘imagined milieu,’ the exhibition aims to gather artists whose approach to image-making are provocative responses to the concept of setting—where time, character, and place are integral concerns to their processes.

 

The show tries to overcome the limitations of genre, as the idea of ‘mileu’ can take on many forms: abstraction, figurative, pastiche, or otherwise—which consequently raise questions over notions of setting in contemporary painting. As a number of Filipino painters have turned inward when it comes to manufacturing subjects that inhabit a certain world—in either dealing with reality, fantasy, or both—there is a great deal of inquiry in the same way W.H. Auden asked through his poetry with the same title: “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd / Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.”

 

/CLJ