DEC13_SUPERDUPERFINAL

Lani Maestro, who is currently living and working in France, offers
ways to intuit her work. According to her:
the neon installation, “her” reads: “for her the smallest act of pure love
was greater than all of her works combined.” i had scribbled this text
in my notebook in the early eighties. it was a line lifted from dictée, a
book, by the late korean artist, theresa hak kyung cha whose work had
left a profound impact on me. i was transfixed by cha’s sculpting of
words in a white page, as she wrote with the new language that she had
struggled to speak with. an immigrant tongue sorting its way out of a
humiliated stammering towards an embodied utterance. this particular
text provoked the question for me, of the value of art, of what art is, of
what art could be at that time. this same question continues to resonate
for me now.
while setting up the exhibition at calle wright in malate, a strange
incident was happening across the street, a few meters from the wall
where we were setting up the neon. people were gathering and dispersing,
muddled and dismayed as they lingered around a parked jeepney. the
driver mumbled dispiritedly how his vehicle had been cursed and that
he will not be able to earn his wages. inside, the bloodstained floor
beneath the passenger seats wreaked with a disturbing odor. someone
had tossed a plastic bag containing an aborted fetus. i stood still and
watched but was not participating. at the same moment, the group of
neon words illuminated its phrase. “for her the smallest act of pure love
was greater than all of her works combined.
the worker who fabricated the neon suggested that i make another
neon piece so he could earn a bit more for the christmas season. he had
surveyed the site and already had a space in mind. in the back garden
there was a tucked-away enclosure walled with climbing plants that
opened up to the sky. i smiled at how appropriate his choice was and i
agreed. i decided the three words for the second installation. “It is this.”
these two neon installations were like a parenthesis to the other works
in the exhibition entitled ‘school of love’ at calle wright in 2018. several
pieces resonated with things seen and unseen, presences which were also
absences felt and manifested.
it feels true that now, we cannot speak only in the convention of the
five senses as we develop other kinds of interactions and relationships
virtually. there are other waves or energy fields that are being explored
digitally, scientifically and so other kinds of awareness are being born as
new subjectivities. i often feel unequipped or slow in relation to the speed
generated by new technologies, that is, in the way we acquire knowledge
and relate to ourselves, to the world. ‘kalibutan’ feels like an ancient but
essential wisdom for being in this 21st century. how could we define an
ecological self at a time when voracity for knowledge is also driven by
voracity for power. how could we begin to see the power of- what is at
any given moment in time. how do we retrieve the compassion that we
are at this pure moment without past or future?
LM, normandy, 7. 2021
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