Marika Constantino
September 8 — October 7, 2023
Opening
September 8 | 6 PM
Gravity Art Space
1810 Mother Ignacia Ave, Diliman, Quezon City
In “Lost and Found,” Marika Constantino acts as a cartographer, drawing out shadows of familiar urbanscapes. As signposts, she threads towards found objects, meaningful in their own accord. Sometimes, the lines and grids turn into meditative circles, much like cycles that one goes through in life.
The artist begins by saying that finding yourself starts with admitting you are lost. The term lost usually implies something negative, as in not knowing where you are and being unable to find your whereabouts. She shifts its meaning and seeks to look at the state of being lost as transformative, where the unknown becomes a gateway towards self-transcendence.
This act of reclaiming is a matter of existential agency aimed towards finding home within ourselves. In being lost, it becomes the journey that takes precedence while to feel good in the unsettledness and the uneasiness is another step altogether.
For Constantino, getting lost is a form of gambling, where she revels in the delicious torture of an unknown outcome. There is excitement in going beyond one’s comfort zone, in discovering new angles of and for oneself. Losing and finding are in itself interwoven, for it is only in losing can the act of finding begin.
– IAF, 2023
