“Every sign, linguistic or non-linguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely non-saturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. This citation, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or anomaly but is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so-called “normal” functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way?” - Jacques Derrida (Smith, p.99, 1995)
Concepts of Identity and Origin
The notion of identity and the question of origin emerge as significant preoccupations from early experiences. The construction of identity begins immediately after birth, entangled in a web of social expectations and classifications: a name, age, family structure, cultural markers, religion, and more. These identifiers act as constraints, imposing a fixed narrative that prescribes an individual’s relationship to self and the world. Faithfulness to such rigid structures—whether concerning race, nationality, or other social identifiers—often limits the complexities of being. While these categories create a framework that shapes character and moral orientation, they simultaneously enforce boundaries that distinguish and separate individuals, fostering an ‘us versus them’ mentality. These categorizations, influenced by societal pressures to codify and define every aspect of existence, manifest through a complex lattice of unspoken expectations and institutional systems. Returning to the Philippines after an extended absence reveals the complexities of these preconceptions in sharper relief. A re-immersion in traditional frameworks of belonging, where shared cultural and historical markers often overshadow individual difference, sharpens the urge to destabilize these fixed identity constructs. Recognition—or its absence—based on pre-existing notions such as stereotypes or aesthetic markers amplifies the drive to explore the fluctuating relationship between self and context.
Reworking Identity Through the Medium of Painting
This examination does not reject the notion of identity, as doing so would make communication and engagement with the external world impossible, given that language itself is inherently embedded in identity constructs. Instead, painting is employed as a conceptual and practical tool to interrogate and disrupt conventional perceptions of self. Within this practice, the painter and the painting engage in a dynamic of signifier and signified. This relationship serves as a means of questioning the structures and assumptions embedded in both visual and verbal languages. The medium allows for play with the paradoxes of communication—utilizing an inherently flawed symbolic system while simultaneously critiquing its limitations. Thus, the act of creation inhabits a dual space, both as author and audience, existing between authorship and spectatorship, subject and object.
Self-Reflection and the Process of Materiality
Painting serves as a reflective process, a means of engaging in a dialogue with the world. What might appear as landscapes are, in essence, self-portraits—deeply visceral explorations of the self, layered reflections that resist simplification. The brush functions as a prosthetic extension of the body, sometimes wielded with intention, sometimes with spontaneous intuition. Paint, in its material substance, parallels the complexity of organic processes: it is akin to blood, containing within it traces of narratives, descriptions, and analogies—functioning almost as a form of visual DNA that traces back to the work’s genesis. The act of painting, therefore, is not merely about the finished surface but the layers of history, intention, and meaning that lie buried beneath. This art challenges the notion of conventional dimension, questioning the assumption that a painting must reside exclusively within the two-dimensional confines of the canvas. These works, with their concealed and exposed marks, engage in an ongoing dialogue about what is seen and unseen, known and unknown.
Navigating Meaning in the Absence of Certainty
The painting process itself acts as an obscuring mechanism, concealing as much as it reveals. This practice acknowledges the instability of meaning, embracing contradictions and ambiguities that resist simple interpretation. Just as the skin covers the body’s inner workings, so too does the paint conceal the evolving essence of the work—what it has absorbed, what it has endured. Transformations of color, tone, form, and texture are not merely technical choices; they are silent testimonies of the process, remnants of decisions that, though hidden, continue to exert their influence. The blank canvas, from the outset, is not an empty vessel but a space teeming with potential, an invitation to creation. Even within nothingness, language imposes the drive to assign meaning, an impulse fraught with its own contradictions. Thus, defining engages in a dialogue of implication, where every description contains the seeds of exclusion.
Revisiting and Re-defining Context
Painting offers the freedom to revisit, re-mark, and reconfigure perceptions of self and surroundings. Through this iterative practice, a more coherent understanding of impressions emerges, an evolving internal narrative engaging with the fluidity of identity. Much like the construction of a painting, the self is conditioned by inherent origins—cultural, historical, and personal—but is equally shaped by the contexts in which it exists. Each viewer brings interpretations, histories, and subjectivities, transforming the work with every engagement. Thus, the work remains open-ended, refusing finality and expanding with each interaction, with each new perspective.
The Visceral Landscape and the Geography of Belonging
The landscapes depicted are rooted in real locations within the Philippine Islands—territories that carry the weight of cultural heritage, identity, and personal connection. These depictions act as markers of geographical and emotional ties to the Philippines, providing a foundational framework for navigating complex senses of belonging. These works serve as points of convergence, visual metaphors for the fluidity of identity, where places of origin are not fixed endpoints but starting points for transformation, dialogue, and collaboration. Creation does not seek closure but opens pathways of meaning—growth involves both building up and breaking down what once was. Traditional dichotomies—life and death, creation and destruction, author and audience—do not stand in opposition; they collaborate, defining each other in an ongoing cycle of becoming. In this way, the narratives embedded within the work reflect a continuous journey—an engagement with identity not as a destination but as an evolving, multifaceted process. This process transcends the personal, speaking to the universal human experience of navigating belonging, context, and self-discovery. The nature of a person is perhaps likened to that of a painting, limited by conditioning and origins of nature but abundant in the way one can nurture limitless possible potentials of self in and despite the context.
Written by Katarina Sabine Ortiz
