On Dec. 28, it was announced that David Medalla, internationally renowned avant-garde artist and the founder of the London Biennale, had passed away at the age of 78. Adam Nankervis, art curator and Medalla’s husband, said the artist passed peacefully in his sleep.
“David has left us to enter the dream. Dave passed away gently in his sleep in Manila today,” Nankervis wrote on Facebook.
“His spirit has transcended and moved so many artists, friends, strangers and the art-loving public over time and space, inspired by his genius as an artist, poet, activist, wit, philosopher and raconteur. His curiosity, joy, his immense curiosity, his alchemical spirit knew no bounds. And his love,” Nankervis added.
“My loving soul mate, my best friend, my husband, I love you. Will be meeting you on that blue carousel,” his message concluded.
Medalla was a pioneering kinetic, earth, performance, participatory and conceptual artist who became a central figure in the London art scene. Born in Manila in 1942, he was admitted at Columbia University in New York on the recommendation of American poet Mark van Doren at the age of 12.
He was most known for his “Cloud Canyons” sculptures, recognized as one of the pioneering examples of kinetic art.
His work has been featured in museums and exhibitions all over the world, most notably at the Tate Museum in New York. Most recently, a version of his interactive installation “A Stitch In Time” (first conceptualized in 1968) was exhibited at Art Fair Philippines in 2019.
Aside from being an artist, Medalla was a lecturer at different universities and academic institutions around the world, among them the Sorbonne, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Silliman University, the University of the Philippines, the University of Amsterdam, the New York Public Library, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Canterbury, Warwick and Southampton in England and the Slade School of Fine Art, St. Martin’s.