Remembering Her: Francis Nacion is Inspired by Memories of His Mother in His First Abstract Exhibit - Arts & Culture

His ImaheNacion runs until June 12.

For Francis Nacion’s 13th solo show, ImaheNacion, the artist gives viewers glimpses of his memories with his mother.

READ ALSO: Julien Tan Recreates Childhood Memories In Abstract Art For His Latest Show

He fondly shares that his mother used to sew his school uniform and that he would play around with loose textiles from his mother’s work. Little did he know that he will turn his childhood works of art into reality. 

“Maze”

Taking inspiration from Paul Klee, a German artist who is known for his quilts of color and simple stick figures, Nacion came up with his own artistic style. His works appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. .

ImaheNACION is also the artist’s first abstract exhibition. Despite this, Nacion maintains his signature style of using vibrant colors, showing the importance of families, and paying homage to Filipino values and traditions.

“Nacion’s abstraction, which is based on his personal recollection of his mother’s favorite hobby of sewing, is unique in the Philippine art scene in that it honors his mother and the craft which is perceived as a feminine, domestic activity,” says Ricky Francisco, art curator and Fundacion Sanso director, and abstract artist.

Francisco says that Nacion does this while integrating his own bricolage of artistic influences, from Basquiat to maximalism to urbanism.

“Mountain Haze”

“In so doing, Nacion merges high art with craft, feminine and masculine, folk and city, maximalist and minimalist, the personal and the universal, in an aesthetic language that is easy to comprehend and Filipino in its predilection for detail, color and pattern,” he says.

ImaheNACION runs until June 12 at Art Lounge Manila, Molito Lifestyle Center, Ayala Alabang. For more information, visit artloungemanila.com.

Banner: “Birds of Paradise,” by Francis Nacion

Order your print copy of this month's LIFESTYLE ASIA Magazine:
Download this month's LIFESTYLE ASIA digital copy from:
Subscribe via [email protected]