UTTERLY ART presents
Milk Sweat and Honey Spit Jeho Bitancor's perception of a migrant in his adopted home
opening
THURSDAY 11th SEPT 2008 7 pm
Utterly Art Exhibition Space
(diagonally opposite the Sri Mariamman Temple, Pagoda St Exit)
229A South Bridge Road (2nd Level) Singapore 058778
Tel: 6226 2605 E-mail: utterlyart@pacific.net.sg
Mon-Sat 12 noon - 8 pm Sun 12 noon - 5.30 pm
The exhibition runs to SUNDAY 21st SEPT 2008 .
Guest-of-Honour GOVERNOR BELLAFLOR J. ANGARA-CASTILLO
AURORA PROVINCE, PHILIPPINES
After residing in the United States of America for a year, Filipino artist Jeho Bitancor presents a contemplative exhibition based on his migrant experience. While a great deal of his countrymen regard the colonial power as “The Land of Milk and Honey”, Jeho as the artist and observer is more circumspect, but neither does he deny that detaching “oneself from his or her origin… is a form of salvation which renders the diasporic phenomenon a painful reality in itself”.
Relevant to Singaporeans engaged in the “Stayers” and “Quitters” debate, the show investigates the dilemma of individual emancipation over national deprivation. Jeho points at the foibles of both migrants and their adopted home, by examining the social landscape and condition it generates for migrants, to unravel the contradictions inherent in even the most sought-after dreamland. Marrying his social realist and symbolist genres, he muses on how migration might affect his artistic practice and posits “a crystallization of one’s essence… a re-contextualization of the self”.
Jeho Bitancor is a Cultural Centre of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Awardee of 2006, who has exhibited extensively in the Philippines, Singapore, USA, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong. Trained in the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts (1984-1992), and the New York City Art Student’s League (1997), Jeho has won several awards and distinctions, and is collected by the Singapore Art Museum, Ateneo Art Gallery, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Aurora Provincial Government, Museo de Baler, as well as several private collections.
