Silverlens Manila is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Yvonne Quisumbing, Sanctuary. Her third solo exhibition with the gallery, Sanctuary features nine of Quisumbing’s signature works: oil on aluminum substrate depicting plants abundant on the farmland.

Two hours from Cebu City lies Barangay Lugo, home to farmland that the artist Yvonne Quisumbing calls her sanctuary. Here, she escapes from the blare of the city and welcomes, instead, the sounds of roosters and birds. She spends weekends and summers painting in a cottage-like studio. She gathers with mothers during fiestas and learns from them how to make dishes like puso. Once in a while, she sees meteor showers, vivid against a pitch-black sky. 

Lugo is the hometown of Quisumbing’s partner, who comes from a family of farmers. They have been planting sugarcane there since the 1960s — but today, their livelihood has become more precarious than ever. Two sugar mills in the area have closed, causing farmers to take costly, and at times dangerous, trips to Negros for milling. Sugarcane farmland in northern Cebu has dwindled by thousands of hectares. 

Quisumbing’s solo show Sanctuary stemmed from a need for the artist to ease her anxieties about such a drastic change to a place that she has, for the past 15 years, called home. For the show, she builds on her Apothecary series, which explores Philippine medicinal plants. This time, Quisumbing features plants that are abundant on the farmland — tigaw, hagonoy, mangagaw. These are, to her, symbols of hope for the revitalization of the land. Intricate, wreathe-like assemblages of these plants layer over — almost hide — slivers of the human form. A dexterous hand, a firm arm: these evoke the toil and care of farmers that are too often neglected and erased. Farmers who often cannot afford health care, relying instead on these plants to heal their bodies.

Each work in the series is painted not on a flat surface but a sculptural form, resembling a creased piece of paper. Whenever Quisumbing embarks on a pilgrimage to pray, she writes down her petitions on paper. She noticed that when she’s particularly anxious, she folds the paper endlessly. These artworks are ultimately her prayers for Lugo—her anxieties and hopes melding in each crumpled sheet. 

Sanctuary will be on view from 9 January through 5 February 2025 at Silverlens Manila.

– Nicole Soriano

Yvonne Quisumbing’s (b.1975, Cebu, Philippines; lives and works in Cebu) Apothecary series—renderings and vignettes of Philippine medicinal plants as symbols of hope and well-being—has been the impetus for her work since 2019. In each of her pieces, she meditates upon the physical human condition and the factors that disrupt its equilibrium. She explores ailments or states of mind and body with depictions of native herbs as symbols and allegories to illustrate her inquiries.

With her 20-year discipline in design and as a patternmaker and seamstress, she applies to her paintings’ substrates the sculptural dimensionality borne from her sartorial background. She reshapes or molds industrial materials like aluminum and fiber glass, and meticulously paints renditions of her subject matter onto these surfaces. Recurring motifs of clothing and masks as veils of stirrings and subcurrents have been the basis of her work since her f irst solo show in 2005.

Quisumbing earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Santo Tomas. Born in Cebu, she established her studio amid farmland in barangay Lugo in Borbon, Cebu - a two-hour drive north of Cebu City. Lugo is currently a sanctuary for birds as well as for Quisumbing: a direct relief from the congested city where thoughts and ideas come in better clarity, away from the constant chatter and blaring traffic.