‘Void of Spectacles’: Mirrors and Illusion to the Autobiography

Void of Spectacles: Reflections on Passages Through Time and History is the new exhibition by esteemed contemporary artist Mark Orozco Justiniani showing at the Ateneo Art Gallery. It showcases his works exhibited in other countries like Singapore and Germany.

Much of the works are hard to categorize. Ateneo Art Gallery calls them “infinity installations,” which describes them well—the exhibits force us to stare into infinite loops cascading downwards again and again. It’s a dizzying experience, to the point where the ushers in the gallery warn you about the possible vertigo beforehand.  

Staring at it can just feel like it’s too much. You see these towers of books and bamboo stalks and cabinet drawers echoing onwards, and it can feel endless. It’s an incredible illusion to witness, maximalism with a minimal amount of space and equipment used.

Staring Into the Soul of the Self

The first two major works you encounter are Well and Firewalk. The guides described them as sister pieces, because both delve deeper into abstraction and the self. Firewalk was first featured in the National Gallery Singapore. Well was originally made for the Kinderbiennale – Träume & Geschichten in Dresden, Germany.

Firewalk is what greets you when you enter the exhibit, and it’s the one that induces the most fear of falling from a viewer. One walks a straight line through a seeming pit of nothingness, and the illusion is so effective that the gallery ushers have protocols for when museum-goers get dizzy. 

Dropping Into The Void

Well, meanwhile, is straightforward in design. It’s well-shaped, and the illusion shows the giant, seemingly-bottomless pit of a well. Unlike the other four projects, Well was created with stainless steel in the brackets instead of the normal metal used. It really does give a better illusion of the void below, and there’s a certain liquidity in its design that corresponds with its concept. 

Both projects are attempts by the artist for more abstraction or introspection. Well, especially, uses hallmarks of childhood like LEGOs and blocks to talk about growing up. Central to that piece is a tower of books in the middle, symbolizing the learning that one has to do as a child grows up. 

Mirroring Autobiography

Void of Spectacles is partially autobiographical, with Justiniani trying to utilize the use of illusions as a way of creating a symbolic narrative of his upbringing in the province. This is especially apparent in Arkipelago, a three-part project that shows his childhood in Negros and the rocky history of the country. 

Arkipelago was created for the Philippine Pavilion at La Biennale de Venezia 2019. It is the only one of the three major pieces to have been primarily shown in the Philippines. The other two, which will be discussed later, were first exhibited in Singapore and Germany. 

Arkipelago: Province shows echoes of chalkboards and apples alongside broken pianos spiraling down. Beyond those obvious signifiers of childhood are muddy roads, ground broken by railways, and a chaotic fire of burning wood, among other things. 

On their own, they could be a muddled way of symbolically representing one’s childhood, but added with the giant spiraling void that repeats and repeats endlessly downwards, and it becomes a commentary on the seemingly-endless cycle of poverty and oppression in the world. It spans down into darkness, and there’s a sense of hopelessness to be felt when looking down at the exhibit. 

Recreating History in ‘Void of Spectacles’

Arkipelago: Capital and Cyclone have similar approaches as well. Capital, focuses more on the country as a whole, with Justiniani attempting to summarize the whole of the country’s history within the exhibit. Cyclone is more of this giant circular sinkhole of resources collapsing into a structure of nothingness, a bottomless pit. 

Both of their approaches have the same effect: falling into infinity, a repeating pattern that we can’t seem to stop. It can be despairing to look at even without the greater context. 

Void of Spectacles is an excellent and efficient artistic wonder to behold. The use of mirrors to create an illusion of an endless void is great enough, but the way that Justiniani utilizes it to enforce social commentary can penetrate one’s soul. As we cascade towards a new cycle of chaos every day, Void of Spectacles reminds us of the emptiness that can exist within that—and how we can introspect further to escape its reach.

The exhibit will be open to the public until July 6.

Related reading: ‘Snare for Birds’: Analyzing How We Look at Archival Data