Conversation Among Ruins by Patricia Perez Eustaquio

Eustaquio is a multimedia artist, whose practice integrates painting, drawing, textile and sculpture. Taking an object-based perspective, Eustaquio examines ideas of vanity and vanitas, the trivial and the sublime, while also exploring the possibilities and limits of artistic expression through various forms.

Eustaquio’s second solo exhibit in the gallery centers on Conversation Among Ruins, a tapestry that the artist worked on for several months, reflecting on the painting, Cleopatra (or, Death of Cleopatra) by Juan Luna, painted in 1881 while the renowned artist was studying fine arts in Spain. Luna's painting mirrors complex issues that Eustaquio herself has been exploring in her own practice: questions of ownership and authenticity, identity, and cultural appropriation. For this tapestry, Eustaquio maps out the central image of Luna’s painting into blocks of color, replacing and re-appropriating Luna's image with readymade images of paint. The entire image was then stripped of color, rendered monochromatic, translated like a photograph, and fed into a digital loom. She said: “There are many things lost in translation, but I think, many could be gained, too. Each subsequent translation lends to a deterioration of the original context, a kind of entropy as one form becomes another. (B)ut the muddling of information could provide a perspective that is unique, if not interesting.”

A number of works on paper is shown alongside this exhibition. Furthering her interests in texture, fragments, shapes and craft, Eustaquio integrates history, memories or allusions to create rock-like formations with graphite. Featuring craggy shapes and rich details, these objects float in blankness, accompanied by contrasting fragments of gold leaf. Through depicting details of paint drops and other objects, Eustaquio constructs a narrative on decay and detritus: once glorious, now reveals the potential of trivial things, and gives an unexpected nod to the ordinary.