Artist Statement
“My Work Investigates the approximation of objects, images, and representations tied to the Filipino-American experience. I use painting to invite deep historical insight and tradition into a container that acts as a public diary. The trilogy of an enlarged and intimate fly, belonged Timbs, a procession of Filipino recipes corrected to serve one person, are to name a few. The diary of experience that is translated into painted representation is my tool for rebelling against the injustices that are attached to the identity that I am gifted with. I use pop culture aesthetic portraiture on memorial objects such as altars, household objects, personal belongings, recipes, and pictures to consecrate the presence of my Filipino-American struggle. I believe colors and gestures are at the forefront of the “liability” of recognition which stands trial as a Filipino-American who hungers to be seen. My paintings represent ideas humbled by the immense sorrow of the colonial experience and simultaneously are motivated by a desire for comfort.”
About Mark Abaygar Guinto
Mark Abaygar Guinto is a Chicago based painter who holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His interests in painting explore the esoteric limitations of the visual encounter. Guinto uses themes of modesty, paradox and ethnographic reasoning in his paintings that represent subjects of cultural boundedness. Those subjects often appear as figureless portraits of objects and color specifically in personal relationship to his Filipino-American identity.
