AT a time when the world is thoroughly consumed by temporal concerns, artist Datu Arellano campaigns for an ethereal rumination.
“Everybody’s so busy with life, which has become all work, work, work,” he said. “We’re so distracted by things like money and validation that we forget about some of the most important things, like our place in the universe.”
Arellano previously tackled the idea by peeking into the telescope, gazing at the cosmos and all of its engulfing enormity to contextualize our position as but a speck in the universe. This time, at an ongoing exhibit at Mono8 Gallery in Malate, the visual artist chooses to go micro and explore the concept from within.
In the show, titled You Are A Microcosm, Arellano prods viewers to look at themselves as an amalgamation of their experiences and environment. He said the behavorial patterns of one’s family, for instance, form part of the person, who then puzzles into the neighborhood, which figures into the nation and so on. These patterns, these maps that outline the makeup of a person, are represented in the show as geometric figures inspired by Tibetan Buddhist mandalas and the graph theory in mathematics. Arellano expresses the images through a peculiar combination of artistic forms, including painting with electronics and sculpture with photography.
The artist, who also does experimental music, interpreted the patterns on two installations, as well. One is titled Tabula Umbra, an interactive table made of graphite powder, polymer clay, microcontrollers, light sensors and other electronic parts. Viewers can trace the painted geometric figures and create sounds by hitting specific spots of the surface.
The other installation is a drawing of the pattern laid out on the floor of the exhibition space using salt.
The primitive forms of Arellano’s geometric designs are drawn on his notebooks from years back, when he was advised that the best way to break free from a creative rut was to do sketches.
Arellano, who studied computer science and worked as a front-end Web developer, went on a decade-long hiatus from the arts to focus on his family. In 2015, the call of passion proved too strong that Arellano decided to return and started sketching once again. That’s when he came up with the geometric patterns and dedicated himself to it.
Arellano started using pencil and pen before shifting to thread on paper in a self-coined practice called tahigami, a portmanteau of the Filipino word tahi and the Japanese word kami, or paper.
Part of the reason for Arellano’s discovery of the practice is his desire for tactile sensation in his works, having done mostly sculptures and installations before his 10-year break.
“Tahigami literally means stitching on paper,” Arellano said. “I started by stitching the geometric patterns until it evolved and evolved into what they are now in this show at Mono8.”
“I do not restrict myself in terms of materials and techniques,” he added. “Play is an essential part of my practice, so I also like coming up with different ways of using something, like in tahigami. And if I play every day, I will never go back into a creative rut.”