Angelo Magno

(Carried Prayers)

Having a background in creative writing and nurtured in a culture with a strong sense of religiosity, the artist embarked in a journey interweaving the process of drawing and writing in the attempt to transcend the human psyche from the rituals of prayer and worship conveyed in paper and pencil medium. The medium, being common in the arts of drawing and writing, facilitated the transfer of the artistry faster than the process of painting on canvas.

The perspective as to what the human psyche is and how it is constituted are the keys to further fathom ourselves or fail to do so. “Who am I?” is thus a question posed by all individuals and it can, accordingly, be said to express an existential fact whether we try to go beyond ourselves and commune with a higher being. With multiple drawings of faces embodied with litany of prayers which further profound a sagacity of characters encompassing emotions, imagery, memory and personality patterns, the gallery is transformed and vicariously represent a venerated sanctum. An inner sanctum that one can soul-search, contemplate or be appeased with the self.

The written prayers alone should have directly encapsulated the very character of an individual. The artist did not stop from such point of view yet have ventured on and made a vivid visual representation of human characters through drawings and made it more tangible.

Compelling it was, indeed, that the artist presented a portion of the human psyche, faith that is, expressed in prayers as a revealing reality embodied in forms of exaltation, mercy and salvation that warrants human existence further. Man is in the world as a perceptive reality. Selfhood cannot be achieved ultimately and completely within the self. But prayers and worship, as being illustrated in the installation, expresses profoundness of self commitment to the one beyond, to a higher being for a transcendental self-fulfillment.

Hopefully, Dala-dalang Dalangin may inspire the spectators to explore their own persona, beyond merely relating oneself, amidst the different visual elements in the installation.

- Joseph Dominic H. Palermo