titled and dated on the reverse with gallery label
oil on canvas
77 x 61 cm
Provenance
Blanc Gallery
Acquired by the present owner from the above
Lot Location: Manila, Philippines
Dispersed Forms and Colonial Shadows: Cian Dayrit’s Spolarium
Cian Dayrit’s “Spolarium” draws from Juan Luna’s iconic painting, here the body is not heroic but as fragmented, almost “kalat” as the artist described, dispersed across the surface. The work employs orientalist visual tropes to consider the body as a site of rupture, a site where form dissolves into pattern and the figure is unstable, caught between image and meaning.
The work is reminiscent of the practice of Kara Walker, in particular “Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart”, in its interrogation of historical oppression, and the construction of marginalised bodies through image-making. Both artists, from different cultural contexts, reveal the residual psychological and political legacies of the past, in which the body is a claimed territory of memory, and historical projection.
Through its visual language and engagement with history, Spolarium positions Dayrit within a generation of contemporary artists reshaping postcolonial discourse. The work stands as a compelling articulation of his practice—one that continues to resonate across Southeast Asian and global contemporary art contexts.
