The exhibition is a celebration of women who are cozy in their own skin. Unafraid to be brazen, even maximalist, and to go beyond imposed gender roles. Visual artist Ninj Reyes Abay’s lush and exotic women are stepping out again.
This time, with more tactile flourishes that further give viewers a glimpse of their character and more texture that makes them even more engaging. In her second solo show ongoing at Bigskymind in Quezon City, “Impulse to Embellish” exactly means that. Abay goes beyond her acrylic portraits and enriches her figurative characters with paper images cut out from magazines.
Between seven years since her first solo show at Project 20 in Maginhawa Street in Quezon City in 2017, Abay’s women have transmuted into many personas: From indigenous women, enigmatic muses, and saints, to the Virgin Mother. Those big round eyes, gazing directly into the gazer are what remains steady. “My distinct style is still there.
The patterns are still there. This time, however, I introduced another media to make collages with acrylic,” Abay said in an interview. A graduate of Visual Communications at the College of Fine Arts in UP Diliman, she is also an art teacher by profession.
Abay says her fascination for painting women began during her childhood when she would doodle images of women in her sketchbook. In between teaching and running her home of artists—husband Dong is an awarded musician and songwriter, and teenage son Awit, is a multia-media arts student�.