Organizer: Silverlens Gallery
Type/Location: New York, NY
Description:
Silverlens New York is honored to present State of the Nations, the first U.S. solo exhibition of renowned Philippine artist Geraldine Javier. Javier’s exhibition will be on view September 10 through October 24, 2026, with an opening reception on September 10, 6:00 – 8:00 PM.
Every morning the artist Geraldine Javier with her dog Freya starts work by walking out into her garden to gather leaves, flowers and occasionally bits of bark. “Garden” here may not be the most accurate word. She lives in an old farm 2.3 hectares (5.7 acres) large, and now calls herself an “artist-farmer”.
Over the last four years eco-printing has been so consuming a medium or process that she has had no time to paint. Eco-printing means to press the sap or pigment of leaves, roots, flowers and bark into paper or fabric. “I hope the audience will delight in nature and share my concern at the damage of it,” says Javier. Employing and supporting those people who live in her compound or the local barangay and who embroider (ten on this project), garden, or otherwise make the work possible is central to her. “It is very important to me that this work is very handmade and made with natural materials,” says Javier, “It is important to show that things like this can only be made by hand.”
Javier finds hope also when she sees people and communities working with nature, setting up community kitchens, growing organic vegetables, working for democracy, making things by hand, caring for others. As Rebecca Solnit recently suggested, “Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war.”
— Tony Godfrey
About the Artist:
Geraldine Javier (b. 1970 in Makati City, Philippines; lives and works in Batangas, Philippines) is one of the Philippines’ most important and collected contemporary artists. With a Nursing degree from the University of the Philippines that included a top rank in the licensure exams, she took a second university degree in Fine Arts, and pursued an art practice. Since 1995, she has held more than 30 solo exhibitions in the Philippines, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, Germany, and China. From 1999 to 2003 she was a member of the Surrounded By Water collective. Much of her early work was in collage form, but it was with paintings that she established her reputation as an inventive artist. These were characterized by either melancholy or wit: death and childhood were frequent subject matters. By 2008, she was making fabric works with the paintings and combining them in installations; exhibitions were a mixture of paintings, installations and objects. Paintings would often have collaged elements, notably preserved beetles and butterflies. In 2013, she moved south from Manila to the countryside in the district of Batangas. Her work increasingly dealt with our relationship with nature. Current projects often involve the participation of the women in the community where she lives. In 2019 she exhibited at the Havana Biennial. Around this time, she began exploring two new forms of painting: palimpsestic and encaustic (with use of blowtorch).
Registration:
To attend the event in person, please register here.