The visual artist, art educator, and curator talks about breaking down wholes, building monuments to the impermanent, and following one’s passion (while suffering its consequences)
“Follow your passion and suffer the consequences. Experiment, fail, discover, learn.”—Christina “Ling” Quisumbing Ramilo
Christina “Ling” Quisumbing Ramilo is a self-confessed “art addict.” The visual artist, art educator, and curator has spent the greater part of her life exploring the materiality, history, autonomy, and anonymity of found objects through her art practice.
With wit and humor, she presents conceptual and formal contradictions in her body of work, addressing contemporary themes such as gender identity, ethics, mortality, longing, ecology, religiosity, and personal redemption.
“My works are mostly assemblages. I see my studio as one huge assemblage. I am interested in the mundane, in the life of objects,” says Ling.
Entering Ling’s Quezon City studio is akin to entering a supersized Kunstkammer or chamber of art. Within a stimulating and engrossing environment dotted with found objects, assemblages, books, curiosities, and accumulated materials for art-making, Ling has materialized her poetries by reimagining and rearranging found objects of varying provenances, states of deterioration, shapes, and sizes.
In her own words, her studio is a space where “objects past their prime” are imbued with new life. Marked by a lifelong interest in the hidden lives of objects, Ling continues to amaze, surprise, and subvert with her assemblages, installations, and site-specific works.
“I personally fear losing my memory. Recently, I have begun forgetting details about my past exhibitions and projects. That is one of the reasons why my works tackle impermanence and memory,” says Ling.
Earlier this year, Ling presented cold-cast marble sculptures of soaps under Mo Space at ALT Philippines. Her soap sculptures, hand-held monuments to the impermanent, are some of the pieces that gained social media traction from collectors, art enthusiasts, and fellow artists.
Here, Ling sits down with artist and curator Patrick de Veyra to talk about breaking down wholes, building monuments to the impermanent, and following one’s passion (and suffering its consequences) as she takes a quick ice cream break from her preparations for her solo exhibition at Calle Wright in Manila, and her group exhibition “Monuments of the Mundane and the Sublime” at Voice Gallery in Kyoto, both slated for later this year.
Can you walk us through your creative process, core ideas, and conceptual concerns in art-making?
My creative process is very organic and instinctual. I am drawn to objects way past their prime. There is always a story and history. I then arrange objects to tell my own stories. I collect and use found materials: used pencils, used sandpaper, old bottles, stairway stringers, old clothes, wishbones, eyeglasses, pearls, keys, dental casts, wood scraps, old frames, and other people’s things, mostly discards.
The idea shifts from knowing what I want to do, or the idea comes to me while I’m working on the pieces. It also depends on the topic I want to explore. On meaning, I ask ‘Why do we do what we do? What do you want to say? Are you conveying it?’ The passage of time. Memory, loss, the fear of losing one’s memory, as both my parents had Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Decay, transformation, redemption.
Earlier this year, you presented a series of cold-cast marble soap sculptures at ALT Philippines. Why is it important for you to create “monuments to the impermanent?”
I am interested in objects that are often overlooked. I use this to highlight an idea. I use wit to give it new context. I use unconventional materials and try to shift an object’s purpose, like the delicateness and impermanence of soap, and use cold-cast marble, which is very hard and permanent. I like contradictions.
The large-scale totemic assemblage of used cement mixers you presented during your Davao residency is a fascinating piece of outdoor sculpture. Can you share with us the backstory behind that work?
The piece, entitled “Builder” made from used cement mixers, was for a residency focusing on repurposing discards in the island and giving it new life. Totems are very iconic. I used that symbol and made it more contemporary.
What are other personal favorite works that you have presented in residencies and exhibitions in the Philippines and around the world?
My other personal favorite works of mine are:
1. “Forest for the Trees,” an installation I made for the 2019 Art Fair. The work was a library made from wood scraps of ancestral houses from Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar. Chalks were provided on-site so that the viewers could write their titles on the wooden books no matter how mundane or profound their titles were.
2. I did two other versions of this wooden library. For the Biennale Jogja V, I presented “Forest for the Trees: Peri-Peri,” a library with books made of wood from demolished Javanese houses in the nearby towns. The other version was at Fundacion Sanso.
3. Presented as part of the group exhibition “Spectrosynthesis II — Exposure of Tolerance: LGBTQ in Southeast Asia” at the Bangkok Art & Culture Center, “Butterfly” is a collection of clothes that I own and have worn from when I was 1 to 58 years old.
4. Part of my solo show titled “Float” at Artinformal in 2014, “No One is to Blame” is a sculptural installation of opposite ends of a bridge that will not structurally meet/align in the middle. At the center of the installation, I placed a lifesaver made of concrete.
5. “Mata” is a monumental installation made of bricks, concrete, and sea rocks that I hand-picked from Taiwan’s shoreline that faces the Pacific Ocean. It is a monument to the eye of the storm that I did for the Taiwan East Coast Land Festival in 2017.
In your series of sandpaper works titled “Grit” you used friction to break down objects and lodge their remains into the surface of sandpaper. What does this process of breaking down wholes mean to you
Markings, accumulation, consumption, anonymity.
The markings of the used sandpaper works were made by laborers, workers, and myself from various projects. They were used to smoothen a surface. These clues, the markings, and the many textures, I find beautiful.
The concept of breaking something down and making it whole again excites and challenges me.
As a transnational visual artist and curator as well as art educator, what is it like being a mentor to many emerging and mid-career artists in the Metro Manila art scene?
I am very fortunate to be able to travel through my art, and share my wisdom to people I mentor. I am very proud of my former students. I like organizing group shows with a mix of artists practicing different genres.
In your exhibition “Grit,” you quoted the late visual artist and professor Leo Abaya, “The practice of life, like that of art, is a succession of attempts, errors, blunders and miscalculations.” Can you share a quotable quote about your personal view of the parallels between art and life?
“Follow your passion and suffer the consequences. Experiment, fail, discover, learn.”
Can you name at least three artists whose works or conceptual frameworks you deeply resonate with?
Arte Povera. Louise Bourgeois. Joseph Cornell. Poklong Anading. Martha Atienza.
As a visual artist who has shown such drive, discipline, and courage in your art practice over decades, can you share, in the simplest of terms, the heart and soul behind your body of work?
Poetry.
What makes you happy?
Art. Art-making. Falling in love. Ideas. Possibilities. Dessert. Chicharon bulaklak.
Why are you an artist?
Art feeds my soul. It is my one true love.