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—Abay said her creative discipline includes time management. “The artmaking comes in between the chores,” she said.
“My life is pretty much structured but when it’s my time to paint, usually in the late evenings, my creativity just flows.” In a lot of sense, Abay’s dailiness of living and dedication to her art is also mirrored in her subjects’ narratives. She says they’re the everyday women that catch her eye and become her inspiration.
First, she sketches them in her notepad as studies before figuratively reincarnating them as joyful, enigmatic women. The printed clothes and colorful accessories such as big earrings, neckpieces, turbans, or gorgeous flowers on their head—set against vivid backgrounds of markets, gardens, or the intimacy of home—depict feminine women who are bold with rich inner lives. There is imperfection in Abay’s women, and deliberately so.
“Besides being led by the material sometimes through a drip or accidental brush, I want to veer away from the classic standards of beauty.” Thus, in her second solo show, the women do not have alabaster skin or aquiline noses, looking patrician in their demeanor. Instead, Abay’s women stand out in their colored complexions and crooked noses, and in her seated women series, they are always slouching and relaxed when they’re depicted lounging in seats.
“For me, artmaking doesn’t start and stop with the act of painting itself. Art should be part of your everyday life, in the things that you do daily,” reflects Abay. Thus, “Impulse to Embellish” 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. The big brown eyes with that unabashed gaze at the viewer will tell you that Abay’s women are strong, playful, and definitely not passive. They invite viewers to stop and discover a new way of looking at women.
Ninj Reyes Abay’s “Impulse to Embellish” is ongoing at Bigskymind till September 14. The gallery is located at 66 Broadway Avenue, New Manila, Quezon City..
