Faye Aleya Abantao

INTERVIEW

Why do you take and create images?

With an influence to dodge rational emplacements, alter attitudes, or appoint emotions, it distresses people in such prevailing and progressively well-studied ways. To endure to interest dreamers and idealist because it is so meticulously interwoven with our individuality and the way we comprehend ourselves and the world around us.

How do you define your photographic/artistic body of work? What subjects do you often explore in your work?

Through the stability and careful examination of images taken from the non-fiction, these images frequently propagate into social symbols, and adversely affect our principles and values regarding gender, sexuality, race and other issues related to identity. Nevertheless of the initial point, my body of work uses pictures as tools to re-construct and re-contextualize conventional images that are handled into faithful depictions of reality.

What motivates your work?

It motivates apprehending events, people and emotions that have patent our world that keeps on growing, changing, surprising and challenging us. Whichever arrangement that might be, will continue to seize the moments, freezing them in time even just for a while.

What relationship does your work have with reality?

Creativity evolved with the medium, but so did the ways of manifesting it. My works have always been to provoke emotion, to send a message and to show another angle of things, It solely aim to represent reality. Something that takes a lot of time and effort to create, something that included a ritual and a handful of things.

For you, what is the purpose of art?

Art is usually about self-expression. It can help others because there will always be people who feel the same way but cannot express it themselves. It does not have to have a purpose. It does not exist in order to impart, to desire a moral point, to amuse, to divert, to distract, to beautify, to loathe, to experiment, to kindle or to applaud; it exists chiefly for its own sake

How do you want the public to respond to your work? Do you have a particular audience in mind?

I want the public to understand and go deeper before giving out their opinions to the work. Students, young professionals and senior citizens or even anyone that might put an interest in my works.

What is your training? Were you trained as a photographer?

I am a self-taught photographer.

How do you define your actual professional situation? What are your expectations?

The most important thing is to uphold a sense of curiosity and wonder. It’s an equilibrium amid working hard and not being too hard on yourself. Many photographers are so anxious of creating a mistake in a social situation that they certainly not do anything different. I think many photographers discern that they are supposed to experiment but after they become operative they just keep repeating their past attainments and stay on the safe side. You have to keep moving, and this really means pursuing your curiosity and not getting insensible.

It’s hard to live off art. Does this affect you and your work?

It doesn’t affect my work. I have a strong support system from mentors and friends who are also artists and advocates.

Have you worked with gallerists, curators, institutions and other art professionals? Can you discuss more about this particular relationship?

Yes. This relationship is an affiliation of common assistance. It is a beneficial platform for advance expansion of practice, and may lead them to acquaint me to other possibilities of thought, and on a further concrete level to professionals both within and outside the arts with an assessment to fostering knowledge and opening chances of experimentation.

In your opinion, what is the current state of contemporary photography in the Philippines?

The current state of contemporary photography is certainly as stimulating as the evolution of art itself; with its ups and downs, moving discoveries and growth that happened along with current torrents and social, economic, technological and political events in the Philippines.

How do you want contemporary photography to develop in the Philippines?

To progress the medium of photography away from journalism and documentation in the direction of a more intangible and curious slant to image making. Stirring from the origins of art photography to different directions to the conceptual and performative work of artists working today, it will purposely occupy and inquire the character of photography. Historically a technique of accurate documentation, artists now review what formerly unfilled inevitability in order to exploit the intricacy of the photographic image.

 


CV

Name: Faye Aleya Villanueva Abantao

Location: Bacolod City, Philippines

Email: fayealeyaabantao@gmail.com

Website: https://www.behance.net/undefayeted

Education:

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Major in Advertising Design, La Consolation College, School of Architecture, Fine Arts & Interior Design

 

Competitions:

  • PLTD Visual Arts Competition (shortlist)

 

Exhibitions:

Group shows:

2016

  • Art in the Park, Salcedo Village, Makati City, Ph
  • Art Fair Philippines, The Link, Makati City, Ph
  • Turns in Form- Curated Show VIVA EXCON, UPV Gallery, Iloilo City, Ph
  • Cycles 001, UPV Grounds, Iloilo City, Ph
  • Re-action, Gallery Orange, Bacolod City, Ph
  • Entrenched, Ysobel Art Gallery, BGC Taguig, Ph
  • Reclusion Perpetua, House of Frida, Bacolod City, Ph
  • Paper Trails: Southeast Asian Works on Paper, Sankring Art Space, Jogjakarta, Id
  • Secret Orange, Gallery Orange, Bacolod City, Ph
  • Remoteness of Gaze, Gallery Orange, Bacolod City, Ph
  • Solipsis, Gallery Orange, Bacolod City, Ph
  • Art of Giving, Gallery Orange, Bacolod City, Ph

 

2015

  • Untamed Territory, Gallery Orange, Bacolod City, Ph
  • Positive A, Bob’s Restaurant, Bacolod City, Ph
  • Feminine Wash: The Art of Feminism, House of Frida, Bacolod City, Ph
  • The Rebirth of Sins, House of Frida, Bacolod City, Ph

 

2014

  • My Own Lisa, Art District, Bacolod City, Ph
  • One by One, KGB, Bacolod City, Ph