Chiqui

Generally speaking, I am used to observing and experiencing realities of our place and history with some distance. In this space formed distance, I feel that the imagination of art has come to have its own places of sojourn. Perhaps this is entirely the construction of my own personality. I often subconsciously want to stand behind reality, to experience that which is hidden below this reality, those things we call mystery---where people are engaged in deep thought, for instance, this is to me the most charming moment. But this doesn’t mean that I cannot become an artist attuned to serious social examination, or logical about it. I can never talk of art as an object without connection to life or existence. I believe in intuition over conceptual explanation; I depend on raw lived experience over borrowed insight; I emphasize emotion and admire the light of rationality. These things are always useful in their individual creative states, pushing forth their own centers of interest and aesthetic consciousness. In this way, my artistic sensibility seems always to flow out of a kind of reading of the inner heart.

Nothing happens suddenly on my artworks---which may be reasonably construed as a reaction, right on cue, against the mainstream postmodern aesthetic. While not necessarily jettisoning my predecessors’ interest in pop culture and vernacular forms, perhaps, I am turning away from both theory and coolly analytical appropriation. And, in privileging of emotion and subjective perception, I use inexpensive materials and minimal techniques in a manner that bespeaks a culture of reduced expectations. It may sound like a kind of third-wave, my pieces may be roughly divided into two camps, each indebted to one of the aforementioned alternative branches of second-generation Filipino postmodernism. Though if art must have meaning, it should be built on a foundation of close link to our current reality. In the long term, art can only be captivating to any audience with the approach of a classic wine, and cannot motivate people to get satisfied in the short term.

The major elements in my recent works, besides the intricate thoughts given to us by history and reality, came directly from private collections of snapshots of cities I have visited in the past, and from drawings one sees in the streets of downtown Manila. These representations justify my adoration to a full life ---always interconnected with one locale to another capturing a moment in which everyday objects provide an epiphany of sorts. While sometimes dreamlike and associative, conveyed a radically disintegrated brand of subjectivity.

My artworks may be undergoing a shift in terms of its relationship to postmodernism. But accompanying this development is a new possibility for art’s engagement with contemporary experience. And these signs of change are a welcome indication that, for Filipino art, there is indeed Life.

Chiqui Rodriguez, the Philippines' new pride, held her first solo exhibition entitled “Chic” in Starbucks, 6750 Ayala Avenue, Makati City last January 2006. Followed by two group exhibitions--- in her own hometown in Angono sponsored by the Tourism Board, succeeded by the Art and Music Festival with MTV Asia (2006) a three-day celebration of the best in contemporary art and music scenes.

She is actively involved with the UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development both formal, non-formal, and informal learning initiatives. Born in the Philippines, she attended the University of the Philippines from 1994-1998. During her artistic moments, she would dabble with her paintbrush and create pieces that mirror the Asian and European influences in her.

She's currently working on two exhibitions in the Philippines and Hongkong due by year-end (2006).