In the exhibit INTO THE BLUE, mixed-media artist and printmaker Angela Silva invites viewers to immerse themselves in a deep blue panorama of works in cyanotype, an antique image-capturing method that predates film photography and produces pictures in gradients of cyan. Divided into two sub-shows, INTO THE BLUE presents the artist’s dexterity and sensitivity in employing the cyanotype process – her technique and medium of choice since the mid-2010s – to present a compelling and perceptive oeuvre.
The first-floor exhibit presents Silva’s family – a once-fabled landed and shipping Western Visayan dynasty – as the subject for thoughtful and compassionate examinations of family dynamics, class structures, and societal conventions of a bygone era. Entitled “Return to Shadow Memories,” this multi-generational family album of cyanotype works consists of family photos and archival documents that have been digitally manipulated, hand-processed, and constructed into portraits, artist books, collages, and an installation that connect chronologically. In using the word “shadow” in her title, the artist alludes to those persons who had helped mold the lives of every member of the family, herself included: these are the numerous nannies, or mga yaya in Filipino – shadow mothers – who had been at the forefront of their rearing yet had remained in the background as they knew their place in the household. The artist also recognizes other connotations of “shadow” – protection and constraint, concealment and darkness – as her works touch on the ramifications and responsibilities of wealth, inheritance, and status, all of which inescapably enveloped the lives of generations in the clan.
The second floor showcases Silva’s experiments with wet cyanotypes, a variation of the cyanotype process resulting from the alchemy of acids, salts, and for this show, dried herbs from the artist’s kitchen and foliage from her garden. Playful, evocative, and alluring, the artworks in the exhibit “Slow Light Botanicals” display the artist’s technical expertise and openness to innovation.
In INTO THE BLUE, Angela Silva deploys and establishes the cyanotype, more popular in the last century for its utility in churning out architectural blueprints, as a visual device to conjure story, emotion, insight, and atmosphere, and therefore, as an unconventional medium for artistry. (Words by Georgina Luisa O. Jocson)