To Find Out What It Really Means
I had attended a poetry reading recently, where one of the poets shared how one of her literature students reached out on different social media platforms — one after the other when the previous was left unanswered — what a particular poem she had written meant. Evasion tactics eventually ran out, and when confronted in person, she explained to the student that “the meaning of a poem is what you make it” (she actually said it in a more academic sounding way, but she forgets).
Instigated by the thought of an entire exhibition of collages based on poems, Pinky Ibarra Urmaza began selecting “prompts” – poetry chosen for no particular reason other than they spoke to her. As she browsed books in libraries or online, the list of poems grew, despite not having any specific theme or guideline. Eventually, she realized that what she had all radiated around aspects of human life that we as a whole have just been learning more about. Grief and self-love are topics now found as self-help books. Hope amidst ageing, ageing in hindsight (or foresight even), are discussed in holistic being workshops. Reflections and rediscoveries, perhaps stemming from familial loss, or even from finally finding our personal truths hidden away within our inner selves, also traverse the artist’s sentiments.
Having recently finished a book about the recently rediscovered artist and writer Leonora Carrington, nods to the macabre and uncanny, or even simply the absurd, are more pronounced. In a game of signifier and signified, visual cues strike where they may, and we are invited to peruse works that are inherently surrealistic. Without reading the poems, what do the works show us?
Bride — peeking from behind a torn screen or aged mirror
Threshold — a stack of unstackable things
The Art of Drowning — horizontal images upright
Forgetfulness — a fading photograph, a letter, a portrait (of someone beloved?)
Introduction to Poetry — a peek into a sealed box
To Sleep — images of rest
Alone — a little girl on a make believe island
I Hide Myself Within My Flower — standing right in front yet a face completely obscured
In This Short LIfe — a lone finger touching a wishing star
Tell All Truth But Tell It Slant — witnessing a landscape
No One Lives His Life — tense, tenuous figures overlapping
Voices — again faces, again places
Mushrooms — bodies writhing
What Horror to Awake at Night — half-empty plates and cups
We’re Late — clocks and pieces
Shinto — signs of life in every little piece
Two Bodies — they touch but do not intersect
Planetarium — shielding her eyes from a celestial body
Love After Love — ovals akin to halves of a locket
The Journey — portals among tree branches
Emily Dickinson’s “Tell all Truth but Tell it Slant,” refers to poetry itself, and how it acts to open our eyes to truths, albeit ever so slowly. As its last line says: “The Truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind —“ Lastly, among the works is a box: “Introduction to Poetry,” taking off of Billy Collins’ poem of the same name. It is sealed shut – we’ll never know what’s inside, if any – allowing us to appreciate without preconceived notions, without worry.
– Koki Lxx, Nov 2024
Pinky Ibarra Urmaza is a mixed media artist drawn to objects with history — vintage books, old toy parts, and other flea market finds. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from De La Salle University, Manila and attended workshops at the MOWELFUND Film Institute.
In 2000, she moved to New York where she completed the full-time program at the International Center of Photography. From 2005 – 2014, she took mixed media courses at the Art Students League where she began experimenting with altered books. Her collages are inspired by childhood memories of ancestral houses, salvaged family heirlooms and remnants of strangers’ lives found in dusty photographs and stained pages. Through manipulating these materials by burning, tearing, painting, and mark-making, her work celebrates the discarded in the hope of breathing new life into these forgotten objects.
To Find Out What It Really Means
I had attended a poetry reading recently, where one of the poets shared how one of her literature students reached out on different social media platforms — one after the other when the previous was left unanswered — what a particular poem she had written meant. Evasion tactics eventually ran out, and when confronted in person, she explained to the student that “the meaning of a poem is what you make it” (she actually said it in a more academic sounding way, but she forgets).
Instigated by the thought of an entire exhibition of collages based on poems, Pinky Ibarra Urmaza began selecting “prompts” – poetry chosen for no particular reason other than they spoke to her. As she browsed books in libraries or online, the list of poems grew, despite not having any specific theme or guideline. Eventually, she realized that what she had all radiated around aspects of human life that we as a whole have just been learning more about. Grief and self-love are topics now found as self-help books. Hope amidst ageing, ageing in hindsight (or foresight even), are discussed in holistic being workshops. Reflections and rediscoveries, perhaps stemming from familial loss, or even from finally finding our personal truths hidden away within our inner selves, also traverse the artist’s sentiments.
Having recently finished a book about the recently rediscovered artist and writer Leonora Carrington, nods to the macabre and uncanny, or even simply the absurd, are more pronounced. In a game of signifier and signified, visual cues strike where they may, and we are invited to peruse works that are inherently surrealistic. Without reading the poems, what do the works show us?
Bride — peeking from behind a torn screen or aged mirror
Threshold — a stack of unstackable things
The Art of Drowning — horizontal images upright
Forgetfulness — a fading photograph, a letter, a portrait (of someone beloved?)
Introduction to Poetry — a peek into a sealed box
To Sleep — images of rest
Alone — a little girl on a make believe island
I Hide Myself Within My Flower — standing right in front yet a face completely obscured
In This Short LIfe — a lone finger touching a wishing star
Tell All Truth But Tell It Slant — witnessing a landscape
No One Lives His Life — tense, tenuous figures overlapping
Voices — again faces, again places
Mushrooms — bodies writhing
What Horror to Awake at Night — half-empty plates and cups
We’re Late — clocks and pieces
Shinto — signs of life in every little piece
Two Bodies — they touch but do not intersect
Planetarium — shielding her eyes from a celestial body
Love After Love — ovals akin to halves of a locket
The Journey — portals among tree branches
Emily Dickinson’s “Tell all Truth but Tell it Slant,” refers to poetry itself, and how it acts to open our eyes to truths, albeit ever so slowly. As its last line says: “The Truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind —“ Lastly, among the works is a box: “Introduction to Poetry,” taking off of Billy Collins’ poem of the same name. It is sealed shut – we’ll never know what’s inside, if any – allowing us to appreciate without preconceived notions, without worry.
– Koki Lxx, Nov 2024
Pinky Ibarra Urmaza is a mixed media artist drawn to objects with history — vintage books, old toy parts, and other flea market finds. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from De La Salle University, Manila and attended workshops at the MOWELFUND Film Institute.
In 2000, she moved to New York where she completed the full-time program at the International Center of Photography. From 2005 – 2014, she took mixed media courses at the Art Students League where she began experimenting with altered books. Her collages are inspired by childhood memories of ancestral houses, salvaged family heirlooms and remnants of strangers’ lives found in dusty photographs and stained pages. Through manipulating these materials by burning, tearing, painting, and mark-making, her work celebrates the discarded in the hope of breathing new life into these forgotten objects.
