Opening the new year, SILVERLENS is pleased to announce Rafael T. Napay’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Ugat.  He uses vibrant colors in a presentation of tapestries, sculptures, and his largest weave painting to date, at approximately 8 by 42 feet. This large anchor piece stands and creates a landscape in the gallery space, an environment filled with foliage, roots, water, and flora.

Raffy T. Napay gathers thread and textiles before he starts on his work. By hand, he makes his own spools of thread, creating unique combinations of color. The thread and textiles’ colors, textures and patterns offer him a springboard from which to create the artwork.  For the artist, the process is a stream of consciousness flow where materials, subject, and personal experience come together to make up the work.

Originally a painter, Napay engages in a tedious process, using threads that are combined and twisted together to express foliage, roots and flora, just as a painter employs brush strokes on a canvas.  He breaks away from the dictated patterns of his chosen textiles by cutting each piece that will be part of his work, committing them to canvas by running them through a sewing machine, part of his process that is akin to collage.  He then pierces his canvas with thread and needle, sometimes punctuating these marks in tassel-like “knots,” creating a confluence of texture and color.  Ultimately, he renders a forest that is symbolic of all people, the experiences, joys, set backs and blessings that come their way.

In Ugat, the artist continues his interest in nature, first rigorously explored in his Liverpool residency.  He uses ugat (Filipino word for root or vein) as a metaphor for humankind’s interconnectedness, owing to people’s shared experiences, articulating the fact that no matter where people in the world are situated, their personal experiences enable them to take part in a common process of growth and evolution.

Words by Anna M. Rosete

Raffy T. Napay was born in 1986 in Manila, Philippines. He graduated from Eulogio Amang Rodriguez of Science and Technology (EARIST) in 2009 with a Fine Arts degree. Whilst in school, he started gaining recognition for his skill. He was one of ten finalists in the Philippine Art Awards in the national capital region in 2007, 2009 and 2011. In 2008, he won the Metrobank Art & Design Excellence Award. In 2008, 2012 and 2014, he was awarded the Juror’s Choice Award of Excellence at the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards on the national level, considered by many as a staggering achievement.

Napay originally used oil paints, until he developed an adverse allergy to the medium. Whilst recovering, he explored the potential of other materials, and explored working with the available threads and textiles at home.  Growing up with a seamstress mother, Napay was exposed to a wide variety of threads, cotton and fabrics and these materials gave him a strong ground into a different world of creativity. The artist realized the creative process, was quite similar - from early conceptualization to finishing touches on an artwork. His threaded works demanded just as much time and attention to detail as paintings. Now equipped with a needle for a brush, thread and fabric as his paint, the artist approaches his canvas as he would a painting. His composition stays true whilst playing with shadow and light, in effect transcending any intuitive boundary between painting and creating a tapestry.

In 2013, Napay was awarded the prestigious Ateneo Art Award, emerging as winner in the Contemporary Artists category, besting artists from all over the Philippines.  Napay’s early works are whole yet intrinsically personal, drawing inspiration from his family, surroundings and experiences.  The award granted Napay two artist–in-residence programmes at both Liverpool Hope University in the United Kingdom, and at Artesan Gallery + Studio in Singapore.  He has held five solo exhibitions since., including a solo presentation at Art Stage Singapore with Artesan Gallery in January 2015, and a solo exhibition entitled Sanctuary at the Ateneo Art Gallery in August.  In October 2015, Napay won first prize in the much coveted Il Lorenzo Magnifico art awards at the 10th Florence Biennale in Italy.