Ash Wednesday (2005) Drawing by Angelo Magno

Oil pastel on paper. Each protrait measures 12x 12 inches.


Daing, Bulong, Dasal
An installation by Angelo Magno
UP College of Arts and Letters, Galleria II, April 2005

Daing, Bulong, Dasal depicts the individual intrapersonal and interpersonal communication of a variety of people in a site of worship after the celebration of the Ash Wednesday mass. Portraits are used to represent individuals which are present in the site of worship. The characters in the work have their own conflicts to confess and resolve It is an art work that explores the human psyche, a religious event that deals with penance, and an exploration on narrativity using different mediums such as portrait drawings, found objects and tarot cards through the genre of installation art.

The installation would like to investigate the human psyche and our concept of the self. The site of worship is an interesting space to explore the dynamics of communicating through ourselves by means of prayer.

Ash Wednesday is the start of the season of Lent. This is a time when people begin their process of spiritual cleansing for the coming holy week. It is a time of penance. The portraits or characters have their own utterance or confession of conflicts and a suggestion for change. It also deals with the concept of impermanence of life. This is reminded in the saying “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” It also deals with the temporality of time and the desire to change for the better as time goes by. People need to learn from the past, cease the present, and improve for the future.

Each drawing is also supported by a tarot card which is installed in the work. . The artist would like to relate the (portraits) characters to archetypes found in the Osho Zen tarot. might be unclear about what those thoughts and feelings are. This type of tarot is usually used for meditation, to turn the individuals attention away from outside events and find a new clarity of understanding about what is in their “inner self.” The artist also attempts to build a visual narrative using the Osho Zen tarots with the portraits for a stronger visual imagery.

The artist would also like to explore the possibility of creating a different space within a site.
“These are places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias”
---Michel Foucault

Fragments of objects in the site of worship also explores our sense of the real. What makes us believe that this is a place of worship? Do the objects installed in the space present or signify what we think they actually represent? Is it really a site of worship? A representation of a site of worship? Or a different site altogether? A theatrical space? A heterotopia?

The artist would like to explore the possibility of involving the observer as part of the creation of the narrative within the work of art. Since the artwork is not based on a certain text, there is ambiguity in the structure of the narrative. The artist provides the setting (the site of worship) and the drawings signifying the characters for the narrative, the observer’s reaction and interpretation on the work would create the narrative or one of the narratives in the work. By participating, the observer in a way also explores his persona through observing and participating in a work with deals the exploration of the human psyche.