Michelle Pauline Lim, Marga Rodriguez, and Mitch Empleo-Ventura
The Big & Small Art Co., SM Megamall
July 11 – 24, 2005
Artists Michelle Pauline Lim, Marga Rodriguez, and Mitch Empleo-Ventura allow viewers a peek into Ladies’ Room, in which each of them manage to reveal as well as wrap in mystery a few facets of each one’s persona. From July 11 to 24, they make The Big & Small Art Co. their own space, letting the walls and the canvases speak for their emotions, values, and private thoughts.
Michelle Lim sees Ladies’ Room as the outlet through which she has laid out what she calls “psychological narratives.” Each piece is like a page in her diary, featuring varying emotions and trains of thought. For Lim, painting has given her another venue in which she can enjoy or live in the moment, curiously exploring different themes. She opts not to give everything away, and even professes that dark spaces do not necessarily mean negative feelings. In a way, she gives viewers enough space to give their own inputs, and to react accordingly to their own personal experiences after seeing recognizable images and symbols.
Marga Rodriguez turns to Indian Madhubani folk paintings for inspiration. Indian culture and lifestyle has fascinated her for a long time, and is glad that she has now found the opportunity to explore such a rich source of ideas. While her works may look familiar to scholars of Indian culture, Rodriguez does not completely abandon her Filipino Catholic upbringing—she even puts them side by side, as if comparing and contrasting Eastern and Western influences. What continues to draw her to Madhubani folk painting is its seemingly endless affection for color and imagery. Rodriguez loves its fancy approach to art. She admits that she has plenty to learn in terms of technique and of the meanings behind those countless images, including how Madhubani folk view women and religion through art, and is constantly amazed at what she discovers every time. The concept of womanhood doesn’t escape her, even in her colorful, whimsical portrayal of women in her works. One of her pieces even depicts her idea of a “Prince Charming.” Rodriguez revels in participating in Ladies’ Room, which aims to take people to see her and her fellow artists as they are through their paintings.
Mitch Empleo-Ventura, for her part, merges painting and graphic design elements in her new set of works. Seeing Ladies’ Room as a window to her inner self, she chooses to tackle the gift of motherhood and the joy of birth. Flowers, too, are a significant element in each composition. Taking photographer Anne Geddes’ lead, Empleo-Ventura explores how flowers have become associated with women, and later discovering religious and mythological references dating back ages and ages ago. That’s why her women look like goddesses springing from a flower, and from which life is celebrated as well. Her “Pin-Up Girls” series celebrates the female form. Empleo-Ventura draws inspiration from the works of 19th century French painter and lithographer Jules Cheret, who became famous for his provocative posters at the time.
Ladies’ Room takes us into these diverse aspects of womanhood, as seen, observed, interpreted, and lived by Lim, Rodriguez, and Empleo-Ventura. All three studied painting at the University of Santo Tomas School of Fine Arts.
Never a Doll Moment
ARTMAGEDDON By Igan D’bayan
The Philippine STAR 07/11/2005
One character in the Sandman series is called Despair, a woman who was declared as a goddess in a sect in what is now Afghanistan. All empty rooms are this femme’s sacred places; she says little and is very patient.
An exhibit titled Ladies’ Room – which opens on July 12, 6 p.m. at The Big & Small Art Co. in SM Megamall – is about female artists Michelle Pauline Lim, Marga Rodriguez and Mitch Empleo-Ventura who reveal (and conceal at the same time) facets of each of their persona. The exhibit mulls over the diverse aspects of womanhood as "seen, observed, interpreted and lived" by the three women.
Mitch Empleo-Ventura sees Ladies’ Room as a "window to her inner self." Her subjects are motherhood, the joys of birth and flowers. In the course of her meditations on why flowers are associated with the female figure, the artist has discovered religious and mythological references. Empleo-Ventura’s women spring from flowers like goddesses. Her "Pin-Up Girls" series is her homage to the works of 19th century French painter and litographer Jules Cheret, responsible for provocative posters during that era.
Marga Rodriguez draws inspiration from Madhubani folk paintings. The artist has been fascinated by Indian culture and lifestyle, which she found to be a rich source of ideas. Rodriguez is quick to say that she hasn’t abandoned her Filipino Catholic upbringing. She even juxtaposes them, as if to compare Eastern and Western influences. The artist does colorful, whimsical portrayal of women in her works. One of the pieces even depicts her idea of "Prince Charming."
Michelle Lim deals with what she calls "psychological narratives." Each of the works is like her own diary, "featuring varying emotions and trains of thought." Viewers are warned not to consider dark spaces as necessarily symbolic of negative feelings. Lim leaves them "enough space to give their own inputs, and to react accordingly to their own personal experiences."
Which reminds me of what the writer Jorge Luis Borges said about reading Don Quijote: How we read the novel and understand it is based on the way we are and the only way we can. "The reader (the sum of his or her circumstance, experiences and biases) is the creator of the work of art," to paraphrase Borges’ ruminations in "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quijote" (a hallucinogenic essay from Labyrinths, a copy of which was given to me by long-ago UST pal Carlos Castillo – "saan ka na, pare?") Thus, the reader creates his or her own Quijote. Maybe I’m reading muddled literary theories into what Borges wrote, but that’s what I got from reading the seminal Argentine scribe.
Thus, a painting (despite its dizzying universe of images) can also be considered a blank canvas in which the viewer sees his or her own world reflected.
Like a mirror…
Or an empty white room filled with mysterious significances.