About HATAK:

​October is FilAm History Month! Five Fil/-Am founded art spaces virtually connected starting Saturday, October 1, 2022 and showcased a variety of programs throughout the month and beyond. Join us as we celebrate the arts across the globe!​

HATAK is a Filipino word used to convey the act of tugging someone along.

​2022 participants include:
Shout out to past​ participants:
INSTAGRAM TAKEOVER
with Rialin José

When? December 5-18, 2022
Where? Instagram @mata.art.gallery

Learn more about our currently featured artist, Rialin José. This Instagram Takeover program will show us more about the artist, her background, inspiration, her solo exhibition with Mata Art Gallery, and more in her own words and perspective.

Save the date and join us for an interactive Instagram Stories Q&A with the artist on Saturday, December 18. More info TBA!

​NOW ON VIEW:

Mata Art Gallery Presents

HALIMAW

Solo exhibition of visual artworks by Rialin José on view starting Saturday, October 1, 2022.

With YouTube Premiere opening performance by Xuvenir.
About the Exhibition:

​Content warning: Artist statement mentions trauma. The artwork portrays body horror, gore, and blood.

The word HALIMAW means monster in Tagalog. This collection features a variety of creatures from Philippine mythology, including: the bungisngis, aswang, tiyanak, manananggal, nuno, and pugot.

​Made with ink and paper, each creature is represented grotesquely, but is also intertwined with deeply human themes. This marriage of the unnatural and natural aims to challenge the juxtaposition of what is good and evil. By tying in uniquely Filipino cultural traits and values, Rialin José hopes to shed light on their dark consequences. HALIMAW explores tsismis (gossip), codependency, childhood trauma, utang na loob (a sense of debt to one's inner-self), respect, piety, and hiya (shame). Some pieces contain phrases in Tagalog and Ilokano.

​Click images to enlarge.
Email queries to info@mataartgallery.org

​​Content warning: The artwork portrays body horror, gore, and blood.
​​Content warning: The artwork portrays body horror, gore, and blood.

​Click images to enlarge.
Email queries to info@mataartgallery.org
Opening Performance:

Sayaw ng Pagitan (≈ Dance of Distance)
By Xuvenir

​Premieres Saturday, October 1, 2022 at 5PM (PT)

We highly recommend you watch the performance from a larger screen and listen with headphones or external speakers.

​***VIDEO CONTAINS FLASHING***
***VIDEO CONTAINS FLASHING***

We highly recommend you watch the performance from a larger screen and listen with headphones or external speakers.
​
​
About the Performance:
​Sayaw ng Pagitan (≈ Dance of Distance) (2022) is the debut video performance work of LA-based Filipino-American experimental project Xuvenir. Sayaw presents a series of collaged travel footage set to a soundtrack of field recordings and live gong and
electronics improvisations, samples, and loops. These elements amount to a
visual compression of space, place, and time as well as the marriage of ancient
and modern sound technologies emerging in-tension, suspended on the cusp of
legibility.

Xuvenir owes its existence to a questioning about our diasporic identities and, in
the case of Sayaw, our relationship to the gangsa (gongs): an Indigenous
ceremonial and celebratory instrument of the Philippines’ Mt. Province. With
Sayaw, we consider the production of a speculative spatial and sonic imaginary
by asking ourselves: If the Indigenous Igorot concept of antayutani (“we will be
projected far”) signifies a transmission of gangsa frequencies across vast
distances, what then would that signal sound like as received from afar?
Furthermore, in the interval, or space (pagitan) between sender and receiver,
how might the projected sound expand, contract, deform, fracture, or even
erase itself during transit?
PLEASE DONATE IF YOU CAN!

We are aiming to raise $600 (USD) to help pay for Mata’s Fall 2022 programs. Your donations pay the creators directly & help us keep this platform running!

Please send donations to:
🌸 Venmo: @nicaaquino
🌸 PayPal: @nicaaquino (send as friends & family)
🌸 Cash.App: @$nicaaquino666
🌸 Zelle: info@mataartgallery.org