Material is never neutral in the work of Patricia Perez Eustaquio; it carries accumulated knowledge, labor, and cultural memory. In contrast to the solitary, heroic flourish of the painter-genius, Eustaquio turns to the tactile, communal lineage of weaving. Her chosen medium holds a distinctly female history, born of many hands spinning and shaping thread to shield, decorate, and hold warmth. By reframing these overlooked craft traditions within contemporary spaces, she quarries geography, geology, and time itself into physical objects.

Yet this rigorous inquiry is paired with a sharp, irreverent wit. By running original masterworks through digital translation and metaphorical blenders, Eustaquio accepts the entropy of muddled information to dismantle established hierarchies of art and craft, utility and ornament. Pearls for Knives thrives in this dynamic tension, dissembling and assembling across history and technology to offer works that challenge our perceptions of beauty and value while flattening tangled landscapes into a panoramic expanse.

Patricia Perez Eustaquio (b. 1977, Cebu, Philippines; lives and works in Benguet Province, Philippines) is known for works that span different mediums and disciplines—from paintings, drawings, and sculptures, to the fields of fashion, décor, and craft. She reconciles these intermediary forms through her constant exploration of notions that surround the integrity of appearances and the vanity of objects. Images of detritus, carcasses, and decay are embedded into the handiwork of design, craft, and fashion, while merging the disparate qualities of the maligned and marginalized with the celebrated and desired. From her ornately shaped canvases to sculptures shrouded by fabric, their arrival as fragments, shadows, or memories, according to Eustaquio, underline their aspirations, their vanity, this ‘desire to be desired.’ Her wrought objects (ranging from furniture, textile, brass, and glasswork in manufactured environments) demonstrate these contrasting sensibilities and provide commentary on the mutability of perception, as well as on the constructs of desirability and how it influences life and culture.

Eustaquio has gained recognition through several residencies abroad, including Art Omi in New York and Stichting Id11 of the Netherlands. She has also been part of numerous notable exhibitions, such as The Vexed Contemporary in the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila; That Mountain is Coming at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France; and An Atlas of Mirrors in the 2016 Singapore Biennale. She is a recipient of The Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists Awards.