Never a doll moment

One character in the Sandman series is called Despair, a woman who was declared as a goddess in a sect in what is now Afghanistan. All empty rooms are this femme’s sacred places; she says little and is very patient.

An exhibit titled Ladies’ Room – which opens on July 12, 6 p.m. at The Big & Small Art Co. in SM Megamall – is about female artists Michelle Pauline Lim, Marga Rodriguez and Mitch Empleo-Ventura who reveal (and conceal at the same time) facets of each of their persona. The exhibit mulls over the diverse aspects of womanhood as "seen, observed, interpreted and lived" by the three women.

Mitch Empleo-Ventura sees Ladies’ Room as a "window to her inner self." Her subjects are motherhood, the joys of birth and flowers. In the course of her meditations on why flowers are associated with the female figure, the artist has discovered religious and mythological references. Empleo-Ventura’s women spring from flowers like goddesses. Her "Pin-Up Girls" series is her homage to the works of 19th century French painter and litographer Jules Cheret, responsible for provocative posters during that era.

Marga Rodriguez draws inspiration from Madhubani folk paintings. The artist has been fascinated by Indian culture and lifestyle, which she found to be a rich source of ideas. Rodriguez is quick to say that she hasn’t abandoned her Filipino Catholic upbringing. She even juxtaposes them, as if to compare Eastern and Western influences. The artist does colorful, whimsical portrayal of women in her works. One of the pieces even depicts her idea of "Prince Charming."

Michelle Lim deals with what she calls "psychological narratives." Each of the works is like her own diary, "featuring varying emotions and trains of thought." Viewers are warned not to consider dark spaces as necessarily symbolic of negative feelings. Lim leaves them "enough space to give their own inputs, and to react accordingly to their own personal experiences."

Which reminds me of what the writer Jorge Luis Borges said about reading Don Quijote: How we read the novel and understand it is based on the way we are and the only way we can. "The reader (the sum of his or her circumstance, experiences and biases) is the creator of the work of art," to paraphrase Borges’ ruminations in "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quijote" (a hallucinogenic essay from Labyrinths, a copy of which was given to me by long-ago UST pal Carlos Castillo – "saan ka na, pare?") Thus, the reader creates his or her own Quijote. Maybe I’m reading muddled literary theories into what Borges wrote, but that’s what I got from reading the seminal Argentine scribe.

Thus, a painting (despite its dizzying universe of images) can also be considered a blank canvas in which the viewer sees his or her own world reflected.

Like a mirror…

Or an empty white room filled with mysterious significances.

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Ladies’ Room is on view until July 24 at The Big & Small Art Co., at the fourth floor of SM Megamall A, Mandaluyong City. For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations, e-mail iganja_ys@yahoo.com.