After my studio in Manila was completely wrecked by a storm, my first impulse was to leave and head to the volcanoes (I’m from the Philippine Islands where there are lots of volcanoes) and later, also in Hawaii, a place throbbing with the pulse of the volcanic. I photographed lava rock, white ash, black sand and sometimes, I intervened. It’s not clear if I made peace with the land by surrendering with a white cloth or if I covered it as if with a burial cloth. Can I define by means of erasure? What is the measure of the wilderness contained in pictures denied of scale? When there are joint observatories of different countries in one specific mountain top looking at the stars, in a consortium, what does it imply? An open sky? I wanted to echo the emotional temperature of places that exist in the wilderness, which ultimately drones at the heart of man. Coming face to face with brute nature, with its pervading sense of stillness and overhanging kinesis, here I have arrived at my own feet looking at our shared volcanic history. Dust. Stars. Land.
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About the Artist
Wawi Navarroza (Philippines, b.1979) is an artist from Manila, Philippines, currently living and working between Barcelona, Spain and Manila. She graduated from De La Salle University, Manila and attended continuing education at the International Center of Photography, New York. She has recently completed her scholarship for the European Master of Fine Art Photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design, Madrid. Her work with photography has taken shape in highly stylised symbolic tableau vivant, and more recently landscapes, constructed still-life, and installations. Her works have been widely exhibited in the Philippines
and also internationally. She has participated in the Asian Art Biennale in Taiwan (2011), “CUT: New Photography from South East Asia” at Valentine Willie Fine Art Gallery, Singapore, and “Emerging Wave — Asian Contemporary Photography”, Korea (2010), amongst other festivals and exhibitions. Awards she has won include: Asian Cultural Council Fellowship Grant (2009), Lumi Photographic Art Awards, Helsinki (2011), Singapore Museum Signature Art Prize finalist (2011), a nomination for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2011) and Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award (2012).