Wawi Navarrosa's Santa Frida: 100 Years Between Us Exhibit

WAWI NAVARROSA
Santa Frida: 100 Years Between Us
fine art photography exhibition and artist’s tribute to the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo

as part of
Queremos Tanto a Frida /Mahal Namin Si Frida

INSTITUTO CERVANTES DE MANILA
Julio de 2007 | July 2007 | Hulyo 2007

Wawi Navarrosa
Santa Frida: 100 Years Between Us
On view until
Saturday, August 4, 2007

Horario de visita
9:00 – 19:00 h.
INSTITUTO CERVANTES is located at 855 T.M. Kalaw St., 1000 Ermita, Manila.
Tel: (632) 526-1482 to 85 | Fax: (632) 526-1449 | E-mail: cenmni@cervantes.es

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Wawi Navarrosa
Santa Frida: 100 Years Between Us

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
Multi-awarded Filipina artist Wawi Navarroza’s new fine art photography exhibit, “Santa Frida: 100 Years Between Us” will be showing at the Instituto Cervantes de Manila beginning on July 6, 2007 as part of “Queremos Tanto a Frida / Mahal Namin Si Frida”, Instituto Cervantes’ special month-long commemoration and tribute to the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo on the occasion of the artist’s 100 Years/Birth Centennial.

For the unfamiliar, Frida Kahlo is possibly the most important Mexican artist to date, and one of the most influential women artists in history whose legacy continues to live on through the years. Her works broke new ground, exploring the internal instead of the external, canvassing the fertile grounds of emotion and psyche for personal expression translated in art. Despite a crippling accident and a tumultuous personal life, she rose to become a Mexican zeitgeist and a global cultural icon. As an extraordinary artist, revolutionary, and woman, Frida Kahlo’s life stands as a testament to the resilience of the heart and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit against all odds.

Wawi Navarroza’s work echoes and reflects Frida Kahlo's spirit in her photographic creations dense with meaning, carefully arranged mise-en-scène and symbolic imagery mostly encapsulated in Self-Portraits. In her appropriations of Kahlo’s pieces, she attempts to map out what she observes as “the quarter-turn Gaze” evident like a red thread running through every depiction of Frida in her self-portraits. She believes that it lends a special key into understanding Frida Kahlo. “That Gaze is the door by which we enter her paintings,” she adds. By assuming the stance, in self-portraits, Navarroza joins Kahlo in a “communion” in a common story wrought by the on-going poetry of personal experience.

Like Kahlo’s paintings, Navarroza’s work is solitary, individualistic, and personal. The photographic pieces are secretive, at times sad and disturbing, but always dignified and charged with the promise of redemption.

The art works on show consist of ten one-off pieces featuring a mix of Navarroza’s original compositions and interpretations/ appropriations of Frida Kahlo’s paintings.

She chose to photographically re-create Frida Kahlo’s works to reintroduce the Mexican artist’s obscured and less-popular paintings to the general public as Navarroza feels that “the public eye needs to be re-familiarized with Kahlo’s paintings specially now that her status in popular culture has led many to focus primarily on her as the “persona/icon” and seldom on the outstanding artworks themselves.” Navarroza continues, “Well, come to think of it, it’s actually a natural tendency for such a Beautiful Be-ing as Frida Kahlo because she is both the creator of inspiring works and also Inspiration itself.”

For “Santa Frida: 100 Years Between Us”, Navarroza deliberately deviates from her signature experimental monochrome work and does the entire exhibit in full-color with camera and paint. In her continuing explorations into the medium of fine art photography, this collection will showcase her photographic tableaus on canvas with hand-painting/ tinting and in some, accompanied by retablo/ex-voto style text as part of the composition. Each piece will be no smaller than 16 x 20 inches.

Santa Frida: 100 Years Between Us will be on view from July 6, 2007 until August 4, 2007 at the Instituto Cervantes de Manila Galería de Exposiciones. Artist sponsored by Hewlett Packard and Bella Luce Studios. Queremos Tanto A Frida/Mahal Namin si Frida is brought to the public by Instituto Cervantes in cooperation with Embajada de España, Embajada de México, Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperacion, and Barcino. INSTITUTO CERVANTES is located at 855 T.M. Kalaw St., 1000 Ermita, Manila. Tel: (632) 526-1482 to 85 | Fax: (632) 526-1449 | E-mail: cenmni@cervantes.es