Excavations from the Land of Not So Plenty

Silverlens New York is pleased to present Excavations from the land of not so plenty, an exhibition of new works by Baguio-based artist Kawayan de Guia. Using indigenous and colonial artifacts sourced from the archipelago, de Guia playfully transforms material culture into lavish, often ironic critiques of consumerism, global trade, and the legacy of American occupation in the Philippines. "De Guia’s practice serves as a porous territory where lived experience, historical markers, and ancestral knowledge intersect. Raised in the Cordillera region of the Philippines, his work explores a complex cosmology where the human is not the center, but rather a singular element amidst colliding global forces. His large-scale assemblage paintings include inset sculptural elements, antique imagery, and sourced trinkets, which, far from being decorative, become quintessential to his vernacular. Through these layered materials, at once narrative and didactic, geopolitical and intimate, de Guia dissects the uneasy and uncanny with elegance, offering to hold space for fragments of overlooked iconographies, erased histories, and cultural memories. Kawayan de Guia’s practice is earnest, embodied, and haunted. His work defines the contours of systems that go beyond the preceptive alone and calls on the spirit that inhabits us and all that surrounds us."