In Under the blazing sun: ‘wag maglakad sa tanghaling tapat, myth meets material in new works by Faye Pamintuan. Through her latest body of work, Pamintuan continues her investigation into abacá, a species of banana plant indigenous to the Philippines, as both muse and teacher. Her inquiry into abacá began during her MFA studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, USA, where she encountered banana plants in the university botanic gardens. Discovering abacá so far away from its native habitat, adapting and surviving a world away from their original climate, reminded Pamintuan of her own experience living between the Philippines and the United States. By discovering these banana plants, Faye Pamintuan located the Philippines in Ithaca. As her new work is mounted in this presentation, she and the abacá embrace a homecoming, and a new light is shed through the leaves.

Through painting, paper making, sculpture, collage, and drawing, Faye Pamintuan explores the roots of the banana plant in Filipino culture and folklore. Alongside her gestural, energetic paintings, hand-built ceramics and abacá paper sculptures cultivate a thriving, luminous landscape. Sown throughout the compositions of her new paintings is the introduction of red as an anchor point in her saturated color palette. Rusty and glowing, red radiates through her backgrounds, creating a distinct feeling of heat, like the blazing sun at high noon. Pamintuan states that she likes to imagine her new paintings as capturing the harsh, revealing light of the midday hour, when the forces of sun and land feel most charged. Within this hour, when the landscape lays most bare, Pamintuan is reminded of folk tales. These stories suggest bananas should be planted at noon to yield the best fruit, and that one should never plant bananas hungry, or else bunches will not be full and round. Pamintuan finds that folk sayings like these reflect the reciprocal relationships we have with nature, and highlight the determining power of natural forces, much like the high noon sun. 

In her meditative approach to making, Pamintuan devises a strategy for balance with nature. In observing and listening to spirit, she cultivates her material world. In this new work, the color red, slashes in the paper foreground, and leaves made from plant paper itself pull the background forward as a reminder that the natural world is much more than a backdrop for humanity. In these powerful material choices, Pamintuan introduces a fresh intensity to her work. Plants, tropical and sub-tropical environments, and the stories of these living ecologies have always been driving forces in her practice. However,in Under the blazing sun: ‘wag maglakad sa tanghaling tapat, the artist shares a glimpse of the power behind the myth - that plants are not passive receivers of our world, but wildly agentic collaborators of humankind. 

Text by Marissa Cote