Review of ‘contain’ at MO_Space in Manila
By Mara Fabella

Pam Yan Santos, ‘contain,’ installation view, 2023. Image courtesy of MO_Space.

A vessel is as common an object as it is indispensable. Whatever its form, we depend upon it for storage, organisation, decoration, preservation, and numerous other uses. Take the artist’s jar. Many studios are scattered with jars of haphazardly labeled liquids either almost finished or long since unused. This is the norm for Philippine artist Pam Yan Santos. An artist working in assemblage, printmaking, and installation, she has gathered a diverse assortment of jars – a collection that traces her own history, and through their stained, used surfaces, reflects traces of our own.

In her solo exhibition ‘contain’ at MO_Space, Santos unbottles the different dimensions of her life through the ubiquitous jar. Often seen as an instrument of the process, here Santos elevates the jar to become an art object in itself. Taking containers from both her art practice and everyday life, she depicts the jar across different lenses, highlighting its role in the process of creation. Creation in this regard is mutli-faceted: manual, artistic, domestic, and ultimately transformative.

“Taking containers from both her art practice and everyday life, she depicts the jar across different lenses, highlighting its role in the process of creation. Creation in this regard is multi-faceted: manual, artistic, domestic, and ultimately transformative. ”

The short round jar instantly greets viewers upon entry. A series of six mixed-media works on canvas entitled ‘Off-Grid, Grid-Off’ (2023) elicits the essence of the jar through multiple layers. Santos draws from her printmaking practice and renders rows of her artist jars using serigraphy. Over this layer are painted silhouettes boxed in distinct, muted colors. These squares frame, wholly or partially, the detailed silkscreened jars echoing the incongruous connotation of the series’ title. Connecting these misaligned layers are fragments of the artist’s memories: old papers, pages from children’s books, drawings. The works deconstruct the notion of the jar as an object of repetition, but one that can be nonetheless sentimental.

Pam Yan Santos, ‘Mind Filled’, 2003, wood, steel brackets, serigraph on wall using acrylic, size variable, installation view. Image courtesy of the artist and MO_Space.

Santos transfers these prints to the wall-bound installation ‘Mind Filled’ (2023). A large mound of jars stacked one on top of the other appears to rest upon a wooden shelf. Each jar is an image printed directly onto the wall. The sight is deceptive. The pile appears heavy enough to bend the beam it rests on or topple over at any moment. Yet the nature of serigraphy suggests the pile could grow endlessly. The act of printing becomes tantamount to the image itself–metaphorically bottled ideas that appear substantial in weight, yet could continue,for better or worse, in perpetuity.

Pam Yan Santos, ‘Assembly Line’, 2023, assemblage of assorted jars with paint, pigment, solvents, crayons, pastels, and other objects, size variable, installation view. Image courtesy of MO_Space.

Why do we preserve things? This thought echoes as we observe the centerpiece of the exhibit: a long installation that spans the entire breadth of the gallery wall. ‘Assembly Line’ (2023) features a whole shelf of actual jars Santos has collected over the course of her work. Jars of different shapes and sizes, each holding different materials: pigments, chalk, paste, emulsion, varnish, thumbtacks. Some are better preserved, others appear to hold slowly rotting liquids. Across the length of the work, we observe an entire timeline of artmaking comprised of the unique moments in an artist’s life, down to the notes scrawled on each distinct glass or plastic surface. For the artist, this is a necessity, yet across such a work, we can see a timeline of ourselves by extension. It reminds us of our natural inclinations to preserve even the most mundane of tokens as emblems of memory and experience.

Pam Yan Santos, ‘Two Half Rests’, 2023, assemblage of assorted jars, wood, acrylic and collage, on canvas, diptych, 152.4 x 304.8cm. Photo by Anjo Lapresca. Image courtesy of the artist and MO_Space.

Santos is an artist known for works that engage in discourse around motherhood and being an artist. She describes her art as a kind of catharsis. This catharsis is tangibly felt through both the order and disorder within the show. The attempt to sort out the chaos in effect yields another kind of chaos–one that reveals the narratives of Santos’ own identity. In ‘Two Half Rests’ (2023) a shelf of plain empty jars sits across a painting of a shelf of jars bearing different labels. Home, tasks, laundry, family, paint, news, project, money, expectation. The shelves echo each other as two halves of the act of containing: the organising and the clarity it brings to light. We see through this show the many hues that colour the artist herself. In compartmentalising our surroundings, we similarly compartmentalise versions of ourselves.

Notably, the title ‘contain’ is presented in lowercase letters, as if what the show underscores is not what is contained in the vessel, but the act of containing itself. ‘contain’ will continue long after its duration for the artist, as it will in a different sense for us, the viewers. The show reminds us of the way we preserve as an act of autonomy over the passage of time. We contain and assert ourselves in the process. Or perhaps we contain, and in the process, we discover ourselves more fully.

‘contain’ is on view at MO_Space in Manila from August 12 to September 10, 2023. Click here for more information.