Ghost Painting / Cracked Category: Study for a Portrait (with solihiya embroidery)

In Kris Ardena’s Ghost Painting / Cracked Category: Study of a Portrait (with solihiya embroidery), (2023), the ephemeral nature of memory is explored through the representation and transformation of a colonial image. Appropriating the image of two tribal women from the Philippines, Ardena creates his painting using common household paints on transparent plastic. This process draws inspiration from the ingenious plastic upholstery, used for passenger seats of local jeepneys, that protects the underlying fabrics and decorative details from daily wear and tear. The plastic surface is then covered with embroidery in the solihiya pattern, reminiscent of tropical cane furniture in the Philippines. Taking six months to complete, the manual threading of the plastic material also caused parts of the painted image to flake off, giving the work the faded appearance of an old photograph. Over time, the disintegration of the latex paint will cause the image to disappear completely, leaving only traces hidden behind the embroidered screen. A Batik-patterned fabric commonly sold in textile shops and clothing stalls in the artist’s hometown of Bacolod City frames the finished image.

In its embrace of everyday materials and local design techniques, Ardena’s approach to art making is strongly informed by the historical, environmental, and cultural contexts of the Philippines. Here the layered materiality of the work expresses the tensions that exist between tradition/contemporaneity; perception/ reality; permanence/ephemerality; and art/craft.