Lani Maestro’s work featured in Venice Biennale

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Former Canadian resident’s work  at Philippine Pavillion

BY Ted Alcuitas

“I am Canadian and I am also Filipino. Nationalisms that are based on purist thinking easily become fascism. Categories are not that important; consciousness is. If we have consciousness, then we would be capable of careful listening and mindfulness of “difference.” We would be more present in the here and now—and that is all that counts.” – Lani Maestro

Former Canadian resident  Lani Maestro will be representing the Philippines in the Venice Biennale together with artist Manuel Ocampo.

The Philippine pavilion is in the   midst of Venice’s 13th-century Arsenale, a hub of the world’s longest-running international art event.

The 57th Venice Biennale will open on May 13 and will run until November 26, 2017.

Maestro, who now lives in France, immigrated to Canada at the age of 25 to join her sister Ruby (Manalang) in Winnipeg. She studied at the Banff Centre and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD)  where she later become a professor. She also taught   at Montreal’s Concordia University.

She  has a sister, Erie, who lives in Vancouver.

Though maintaining a low profile in Canada,  Lani Maestro’s talent and influence should not be underestimated, says CanadianArt. She has exhibited at the Sharjah Biennial, the Busan Biennial and the Istanbul Biennial, among other major international events.

Maestro is committed  to an ideal of practice that is “independent”—as “critical” and “social as it is simultaneously wild and sensual.”

In 2012, she won the  $25,000 prize by the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts  for outstanding achievement by a Canadian artist.

The  jury statement for the award noted: “many of Maestro’s works situate places within places as a means by which to have us travel in and out of the home, inside and outside space, hoping to erode binary opposition. In this sense we might describe Maestro’s work as architecture of the body, with the proviso that such works, which emphasize passage rather than permanence, ultimately erode architecture’s claim to authority.”
  The following images and caption are from an article by CanadianArt:

Lani MaestroThe newest work in Lani Maestro’s Philippine Pavilion presentation at the Venice Biennale is meronmeron
(2017), a series of benches, visible in this photo, that Maestro hopes is an invitation to viewers to an invitation to “pause, to be with oneself alone, or be alone with others.” Photo: Andrea D’altoe. Courtesy of the Philippine Pavilion.

 

 

Lani MaestroThis neon work by Lani Maestro, hanging in the Venice Biennale’s Philippine Pavilion, was originally created for an exhibition at Centre A in Vancouver. Photo: Paolo Luca. Courtesy the Philippine Pavilion.

“I think the emotion or feeling this particular artwork evokes touches everyone. The Biennale is not an impoverished location, but perhaps a certain kind of impoverishment or homelessness also inhabits each and everyone of us,” she told CanadianArt in an interview.

“In the weeks that we have been working, I have observed people around us—cleaning ladies, builders, painters, security guards, curators, artists—looking, watching, talking, but also making comments from afar as the installation was slowly coming together. So there is already a reverberation of some kind, even before the work has been finalized.”

 

Lani MaestroLani Maestro’s neon artwork in the Philippine Pavilion (at left) with paintings by Manuel Ocampo (at right). Photo: Paolo Luca. Courtesy of the Philippine Pavilion.

Maestro told CanadianArt that “teaching made me “study” enormously, as I approached pedagogy as learning together with my students. But, like everything else, universities and colleges were changing rapidly during my teaching years with the introduction and advancement of technology. At some point, it bothered me that I did not hear the word “inspiration” being uttered anymore. And I also remember the time when students began to refer to art as an “industry,” and set their goals merely towards gallery representation and the like.”

Lani MaestroA visitor views Lani Maestro‘s neon work at the Venice Biennale’s preview for the Philippine Pavilion. As Maestro writes, “the Biennale is not an impoverished location, but perhaps a certain kind of impoverishment or homelessness also inhabits each and everyone of us.” Photo: via Philippine Arts in Venice Biennale Facebook page.

 

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