Conversation with Wawi Navarroza

‘As Wild As We Come’ at Silverlens Manila
By Nadya Wang

Wawi Navarroza’s solo exhibition ‘As Wild As We Come’ was first presented in London at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, and is on show at Silverlens Manila until 5 April 2023. A continuation of her self-portraits series, the solo exhibition charts the artist’s growth both professionally and personally. From Manila to Spain, and from Bali to Turkey, Wawi talks about the pathways she has forged for herself moving through the world. She reflects on what she has learnt – and unlearnt – as she navigates art-making, motherhood and living life on her own terms.

Wawi Navarroza, ‘The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter/The Self-Portraitist (After Alcuáz, Self-Portrait)’, 2019, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle, cold-mounted on acid-free aluminum, with artistʼs exhibition frame i.e. wrapped fabric on double wood frame custom-tinted to WN skin tone, 101.6 x 135.38cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Galleries.

You received a Bachelor of Arts in Communcation Arts from De La Salle University, Manila, and later a Masters in Contemporary Photography (Master Europeo de Fotografía de Autor). What aspects about your education did you enjoy, and what less so? How has your formal training contributed to your artistic practice?

I enjoyed the philosophical aspect of learning about light, camera and photography while at university. The gem of it all was having artist Judy Freya Sibayan, Assistant Professor, Department of Communications, De La Salle University (DLSU), as my mentor. She gifted us critical thinking, and gave us thick wads of theories to read. These gave me an early start to seeing beyond the veil of a pretty picture. She taught me the value of self-reflexivity, and I learnt how to be discerning with my intentions and process. I made self-portraits as part of school exercises and she encouraged me to explore them. And when she saw the landscapes I made a few years into my professional practice, she identified them as self-portraits too. 

It was a special time in DLSU since we were the first batch that received not only training in the dark room, but also with digital photography, which was just beginning to become widely available. We used digital cameras and were taught HTML coding. I was in love with the dark room romance, but also did not balk at the digital.  

Later, in my Masters programme in Madrid, I was steeped in what was defining “contemporary photography”. The Spanish were leading the resurgence of the photobook, and my professors were practising European photographers Martin Parr and Elger Esser. 

In retrospect, it goes with the territory that like many artists given the chance at higher education abroad via grants and scholarships, my exposure was very much Western, which emphasised independent thought, technique and theory. Clarity, tidiness and sophistication were the goals. I enjoyed fitting in cerebrally for a time, but these days, I prefer to be intuitive, more sensorial, close to my Filipino ancestral roots, somewhat indiscernible, a little savage, and both serious and playful. Unlearning – and decolonising – is definitely part of the learning. 

What drew you – and continues to draw you — to photography? What does it offer to you? 

Photography has been a constant witness and ally. I like loyalty. We are loyal with each other even if we argue sometimes. I like that photography is constantly evolving, and thus always contemporary. Though the principles are the same, with light and time, technology is the wild card. A few years ago, my digital camera’s resolution could not allow the big sizes that I can produce now. There have been improvements in image quality by leaps and bounds and if you see it in actual framed artworks, and not on a screen, it is beautiful. The tones are incredible! All the same, I am not limited to only the pleasure of the photographic capture. I intervene and make my hand present in all stages of the making: in studio, in the camera, in image processing, in print, and even in the artwork frame. In the end, I am the medium.

“Photography has been a constant witness and ally. I like loyalty. We are loyal with each other even if we argue sometimes. I like that photography is constantly evolving, and thus always contemporary.”

Wawi Navarroza, ‘I Want To Live A Thousand More Years (Self-Portrait After Dengue, with tropical plants and fake flowers)’, 2016, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle, cold-mounted on acid-free aluminum, with artistʼs exhibition frame i.e. double wood frame custom-tinted to WN skin, 127 x 101.6cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Galleries.

Could you tell us more about ‘A Neo-Tropical Tapestry’ which was in posthumous dialogue with Bali-based artist Murni for her retrospective ‘Merayakan Murni’ in 2016, presented by Ketemu Projects at Sudakara Artspace, Bali? What drew you to Murni’s practice, and how did you “converse” with Murni in these works? 

Honestly, I only started knowing about Murni’s works through the ‘Merayakan Murni’ project with Ketemu. It was a fast friendship with Murni. I love her brash spirit, the in-your-face graphic figurations and the unexpected color combinations. This woman was fierce, irreverent, and rock-and-roll. She was both strong and tender. She went through a lot in her life. Her story with fabric impacted me and has forever influenced my works. Aside from immersing in Murni’s works, this half-year project included a residency at Valentine Willie’s villa. I spent time in Ubud, in nature, collecting local flora, fauna and fruits while I was researching tropicality and identity. 

At some point, I became severely ill with dengue fever and was hospitalised. The residency was truncated. I could not walk, and it took me a while to recover. A few months after, back in Manila, I made a work on this experience and the colours exploded in my new works. It was from the fever or Murni or a life-lust reaffirmation after disease or a coming back to my tropical roots — it was all there. There were pieces I made in conversation with Murni’s works where I appropriated her paintings into photographic form. I also created original tableaus from the experience, such as ‘I Want To Live a Thousand More Years (Self-Portrait after Dengue, with tropical plants and fake flowers) (2016). We launched the exhibition in July 2016. Little did I know that the opening night in Bali was also the night I received a call that my Manila studio was burning. 2016 was a tough year. 

Wawi Navarroza, ‘Collecting Dust’, 2017, acrylic, oil, marble dust on canvas; durational painting, 4-5 months accumulation, 182.88 x 243.84cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Galleries.

Could you talk about the durational painting ‘Collecting Dust’ (2017)? How does it complicate/complement what you express in your fine art photography specifically within ‘MEDUSA (The Island & Tropical Marble)’ (2017) and more generally in your practice at large?

After the fire of 2016, I did not have a studio. I traveled a lot and in the same spirit as ‘DOMINION’ (2010-2011), I packed my bags and took to the world outside, to nature for answers to big questions. I guess I was looking for a certain architecture, of weight, and form… and planetary time. 

When I thought of marble, I thought of all the Greek and Roman art we have learnt about in museums and grand memorials, and not on a tropical island. So then I approached building my new work ‘MEDUSA’ (2017) with this foggy marble-dust suspended in the air, mythic, island-story which is actually in the tropics, in the Philippines. Marble grew on this island from the sea bed to the mountaintop, and men worked with this raw material in workshops with heavy machinery. I contrasted the hardness of the material, sun and labour with the softness of white, light and dust. 

It felt natural to me to make ‘Collecting Dust’ (2017) which was a large blank blackened canvas I left for five months at the workshops to collect dust. While the men did their daily work, the white sprinkling of marble dust encrusted on the canvas formed an abstract constellation. It is another way of recording. Like photography, it needs time. I guess I also could not shake off the Duchampian influence, in reference to his work ‘Elevage de poussière; Dust Breeding; Duchamp's Large Glass with Dust Motes’ (1920). At the same time, there was a book by David Campany titled ‘A Handful of Dust’ (2015) which came to my hands that I found very poetic.

I do not consider making installation art or painterly works like this as aberrations to my practice. I go with my curiosities and sometimes a variation from the photographic works enriches the exhibition as a whole. I am synesthetic like this. I like variety, and having the pieces talk to each other. 

You’ve worked on collaborative projects such as VISIBLE through WNC Projects with Nicolás Combarro for Manila Biennale 2018. What do collaborative projects like this one offer to your practice? 

I do a lot of solitary work for my studio practice, including making my self-portraits. Working on collaborative projects with other artists whom I admire is a welcome change and a great exercise to try out new ideas. I have done a couple with Ling Quisumbing Ramilo for our multi-place art installation of ‘Everywhere There You Are’. I have collaborated with Spanish artist Nicolás Combarro for the Manila Biennale and also on other projects with photography, publication and education. In many ways, through our conversations and osmosis as studio neighbors, painter Maya Muñoz has become a close confidante and collaborator. 

Some years ago, I founded Thousandfold which has given me the chance to mentor, publish and promote emerging talent in photography from the Philippines. I am also one of the founding members of FotomotoPH, which is dedicated to championing and showcasing the best of local photography across different islands in the Philippines. Though I have decided to slow down a bit, I have this part of me that will forever be a hyphenate-something. My main focus is my art and family, and the rest is community and advocacy.

Wawi Navarroza, ‘Self Portrait for my Grandfather’, 2007, lambda C-print, cold-mounted on acid-free aluminum, with artist’s exhibition frame i.e. double wood frame custom-tinted to WN skin tone, 60.96 x 45.72cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Galleries.

Why did you decide to present ‘Wawi Navarroza: Self-Portraits & The Tropical Gothic’ to focus on self-portraits in 2019? What did the self-portrait offer to you at this time? How did the new pieces build on or differ from the older ones presented?

My self-portraits have functioned as markers, both in the professional and personal sense. You could trace my timeline through the crests and troughs of upheavals and many resurrections, with a self-portrait marking an end and a beginning of another chapter. The self-portraits are not diaristic per se but symbolic, even talismanic. They are testaments to what can be traversed and learned. We are made for a thousand rebirths. 

2019 was the year I returned to having a physical studio space again in Manila, after years of moving, travel, being a peripatetic artist and a worldly vagabond. With this new space, I took a deep breath and reassessed what my art practice has really been about, which is self and surroundings. ‘Self-Portraits and the Tropical Gothic’ (2019) is once and for all a reclaiming of my identity and roots as Filipino, Southeast Asian, a postcolonial hybrid of the Spanish, American and pan-Oriental. The cacophony of colours, fabrics, patterns, and horror vacui is unapologetically Pinoy. There is wit, humor and arms-akimbo sarcasm but also brave tenderness and vulnerability. 

Including an earlier piece ‘Self-Portrait for my Grandfather’ from ‘1oo Years Between Us’ (An homage to Frida Kahlo on her birth centennial, 1907-2007) and ‘Autorretrato con ladrillos” (Self-Portrait with Bricks) from ‘Ultramar’ (2012) reinforces the element of time and the contemplative nature of the exhibition. 

The self-portraits are my form of resistance. I am still here no matter what. The artist/woman/mother/Filipina/Asian/transnational is present. She sits in her power, she is seeing and representing her self, and she can heal and transfigure her self. What I learned while living in Istanbul these past few years is that in Byzantine iconographies, the Pantokrator is portrayed seated in triumph and calm exaltation. I believe that is what I do with my self-portraits.

“You could trace my timeline through the crests and troughs of upheavals and many resurrections, with a self-portrait marking an end and a beginning of another chapter.”

Wawi Navarroza, ‘Wawi Navarroza: Self-Portraits & The Tropical Gothic’, 2019, exhibition view. Image courtesy of Silverlens Galleries.

You often depict scenes at home, as signalled by beds, chaises longues, lamps etc. Why are domestic scenes compelling?   

The self-portrait tableaus are introspective in nature and they hint at interior worlds, whether in the body as visceral experiences or in the liminal space as memories or symbolic codes. The interior is the setting for what is private, vulnerable, and also holds the architecture of safety and belonging. It is home. For a person like me who has traveled extensively, this means a lot. I imagine for everyone, these past few years in lockdowns, we were all made to rethink and reimagine what home is and what matters most. 

With the tableaus’ interiors, I am deliberately asserting “women’s work” such as décor, design, crafts, traditional arts such as banig weaving, the upcycled basahan, handmade objects from local materials like abaca, indigenous textiles from the Cordilleras, various fabrics from different places, objects that carry the material history of their origins, such as Beykoz glass of Istanbul, kilims and clay earthen vessels from Anatolia… I mix these with elegant European and Ottoman vintage furniture, and then the cheap plastics, vinyl linoleums and artificial flowers. They are all signifiers. There is a method to the madness and I have placed every little detail with a purpose.

Wawi Navarroza, ‘The Weightlifter Orans: Auit At Gaua (Self-Portrait with Blue Ribbon)’, 2022, archival pigment ink on Hahnemühle Photo Lustre mounted on dibond, artist frame with wooden mat board and glazed, colored frame, 135 x 101cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Galleries.

And in the self-portraits, clothes feature significantly. How do you decide on what to wear? 

Clothing is important in the work but I honestly look at it as another element to complete the collage. I pay attention to the pattern, shape and color and how it affects the rest of the image. In some, I will start with a key piece of clothing like the top I am wearing in ‘The Weightlifter Orans/Auit at Gaua (Self-Portrait with Blue Ribbon)’ (2022). The pattern is directly in reference to the striped tarpaulin trapal that is ubiquitous in the Philippines. It is a creation by one of Philippines celebrated avant-garde fashion designers Carl Jan Cruz. In another work, I am wearing clothes by the legendary Rajo Laurel. I wear them in my artworks to celebrate my relationship with these amazing Filipino creatives I admire. These are examples of the many things that serve as quiet, delicious details in the images.  

And while I have no problem relating my work with fashion, it would be a mistake to say that my work is about fashion just because it has photography and fabrics.

Could you speak about your current exhibition ‘As Wild As We Come’, which was first presented in London at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, then at Silverlens Gallery? In particular, could you speak to how the works you are exhibiting expand your oeuvre?

‘As Wild As We Come’ is a continuation of my self-portraits series, coming out of relocating from Manila to Istanbul, punctuated by the transformative experience of childbirth and motherhood, all traversed during the pandemic and amidst a personal/global standstill. The suite of 10 new large-format colorful works marks a celebratory return, rebirth and regeneration. She is a woman at the threshold, and these are her portraits. What is the threshold if not the picture frame, if not a portal to a new life, new place, new time.

Through the embodied self-portraits, I explore and discuss the Tropical Gothic, the "Wild Wild East", the “Wild” in Women/Mother/Artist/Creatrix, postcolonial camp, the question of kitsch and “women’s work”, diaspora, transnationality, post-photography, and colour.

Wawi Navarroza, ‘Portals / Double Portrait (Self-Portraits)’, 2022, archival pigment ink on Hahnemühle Photo Lustre mounted on dibond, artist frame with wooden mat board and glazed, colored frame, edition 2 of 7, 117 x 101cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Galleries.

Could you talk about ‘Portals / Double Portrait (Self-Portraits)’ (2022)? Does it feature your child? And what are you trying to express in the artwork? As your child grows and you have simultaneously grown as a mother, how has your artistic practice evolved to reflect these changes, beyond what is seen in your work? 

Yes, that is my son Gabriel in his first cameo. For something as significant as arriving at the crossroads where being a female artist intersects with being a new mother, the fact that the works are self-portraits boldly lends visibility to this otherwise fraught private-meets-institutional critique on the creator/creatrix both as artist and as mother. With this work, I wish to say that to be an artist and to be a mother is a symbiotic interplay, and that one does not annihilate the other.

Wawi Navarroza, ‘As Wild As We Come’, 2022, exhibition view. Image courtesy of Silverlens Galleries.

You have a long working relationship with Silverlens Gallery. Could you talk to us about the symbiotic collaboration you have with the team? How have you grown together?

I have been with Silverlens since 2007. 16 years! I did not realise the time. I still remember the day Isa and Rach first looked at my works and told me they were interested in them not just for a show but for the long run. They have seen everything, from the film-based black-and-white experimental works to the transition to full-colour digital works, from the big landscapes to the small terrariums, from dirt drawings to installation art, and from moving to New York, Spain and back, through typhoons and fires that destroyed my studios, illness, motherhood, moving to Istanbul and back. What can I say? They were there, present, ready to receive me in whatever shape or form I was in. I have always been free to be me and call the gallery my mother gallery, my family.

As I based myself in Istanbul, I felt myself quite grown and expanded, and along with it came the addition of my other gallerist Kristin Hjellegjerde, based in London and Berlin, who was steadfast in her faith in me even during the unproductive years I was navigating new motherhood and art-making. It was a natural fit and my first exhibition in London signalled a new era. Almost at the same time, Silverlens launched Silverlens New York in the heart of Chelsea which was a big turnkey historical moment for many. Then a few months after, Kristin Hjellegjerde announced another branch to open in Palm Beach. I am grateful for all of these, and that we get to grow alongside each other .  

How do you strike a balance among staying true to your artistic vision and practice, maintaining financial stability and living life? 

By being honest about my desires, my vision, and having the best partners to dream and build with. I trust my gallerists and I am grateful to everyone who has been a part of my growth: those who have supported my work from the get-go and those who see value in what I do. These are the people who know that if I envision something important, nothing will stop me from getting it done.

‘As Wild As We Come’, a solo exhibition by Wawi Navarroza, opened on 2 March and will close on 5 April at Silverlens Manila. More information here. 

The interview has been edited.