“The Filipino is a person of here and now. He knows history not as a process but as a presence—a tangible, solid object like a rock or tree or stone—forever existing, forever revealing itself.” – Nick Joaquin (From “Culture and History”)
Limestones form through an accumulation of calcium matter carried by water, oftentimes produced from bodies of ancient life throughout vast spans of geologic history. What we see as a calcified shape is an accumulation of bodies born from the depths of oceans and lagoons exposed by the movements of earth’s dynamic surface. For Paredes, the mercurial origins of limestone through which he articulates the surface and the subjects of his paintings echoes the fantasy of the petrified present that conceals the fact that it is constitutive of an ongoing flow of the shaping of our social condition.
Excerpt written by Isola Tong.
