Hansei

Jo Balbarona

See “Hansei” by artist Jo Balbarona on its artist’s reception on November 5, Wednesday, at 5pm at Fundacion Sansó. This exhibit is held in partnership with Galerie Joaquin, and will run until November 14, 2025.

“In Hansei, this serenity takes on a layered resonance through Balbarona’s dialogue with the art of Juvenal Sansó. Paying homage to the master, she tucks visual echoes of Sansó’s diverse periods—the somber structures of his Barong-Barong and Black Series, the haunting lyricism of Black Bouquet, the skull wreathed with flowers, and the luminous grace of his floral and Brittany landscapes—into the folds of her painted origami cranes. These fragments, folded into her imagery, act as vessels of remembrance: quiet acknowledgments of the influences and inheritances that shape an artist’s becoming.

In doing so, Balbarona transforms Sansó’s visual language into meditations of her own. Each crane becomes a metaphor for how we absorb and transmute the elements of our lives—the beauty, the sorrow, the fragments of others’ visions—into something personal and whole. She invites viewers to consider what we, too, fold into ourselves from the world around us: the traces of memory, art, and experience that accumulate in our inner lives.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Joan Antonio Balbarona, a self-taught artist, was born on March 8, 1977 in Hindang, Leyte. She studied Food Science and Technology at UP Los Baños. In 2013, she studied at the Art Students League of New York under the tutelage of the well-known abstractionist Ronnie Landfield. Balbarona was one of the finalists in the non-representational category in the 2017 GSIS national art competition, and a finalist in the 2017 Metrobank Art and Design Excellence (MADE) competition for her sculpture entitled “The Colony.”

“Hansei” by Jo Balbarona will run from November 5 to 14, 2025 at Fundacion Sansó, 32 V. Cruz St., Brgy. Sta. Lucia, San Juan.

^Venie

Fundacion Sansó