Carina Santos: If We Opened People Up, We’d Find Landscapes
London-based writer and artist Carina Santos inherits the artistic flair of her grandfather Mauro “Malang Santos“. He was awarded “Artist of the Year” in 1964 by the Society of Philippine Illustrators and Cartoonists. Carina’s works have their own character, it presents gestural expressionism of landscapes in various forms, such as paintings, poured sculpture, textile work, and digital occupations. For her past works, she has used traditional mediums. But since moving to London Carina has been exploring a more diverse approach. She introduces new media such as websites, videos, and sound into her creations. It comes with a particular interest in collaboration and communication via the Internet.
Her current exhibition’s title If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes, is taken from French director Agnès Varda’s The Beaches of Agnès. With the paintings produced over a year, her show intends to explore themes of both dislocation and a simultaneous existence or the fact of a moving point. This point in transit characterizes the artist, forever oscillating between spaces — resulting in a sense of dislocation. These spaces collapse, the depth of a place flattens, and the layers of the space, instead of producing a sense of distance, are viewed from a pinhole, encased like an image in a photograph.
For Carina Santos, landscapes are often thought of as distant, dull, or stagnant. But she believes we move along and around them. Because of movement — a moving point, in transit, forever — places become portraits; history is written, and we partake in this writing, for better or worse.
“We shift around spaces and change them again and again and again. The world is in constant flux, and we have always had a hand in it. We are of the earth; we look at our past, present, and future. All at once, and also not.”
Carina Santos
If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes is on view until April 23, 2022, at West Gallery, 48 West Avenue, Quezon City.
Notes about the Contributor
Daniel Lampa
Art enthusiast and into Fashion, French Culture, Mid-century modern design and spends a lot of his time curating his home in Manila and LA. He lives with his 3 dogs, Coco, Yohji and Junya.
