Maria Taniguchi is a contemporary Philippine artist born in 1981. She is known for her "brick paintings" made of repetitive grey-black rectangles. For these paintings, Taniguchi draws a grid and slowly fills in each "brick" one by one over several months. She also creates conceptual performance art and installations that are site-specific and explore relationships between subject, representation, and process through various mediums including sound, video, painting and sculpture. For one 2011 work, she had a Filipino craftsman remake the arms of a sculpture, interspersing footage of the process with jungle scenes.

1. Bellows College
How has a contemporary artist expanded the range
of medium and techniques they utilized?
1CONTEMPORARY PHILIPPINE ARTS FROM THE REGION

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Artist:
MARIA
TANIGUCHI
Born in 1981, Dumaguete City
best known for her ongoing series of labour-
intensive 'brick paintings' that are made of
repetitive patterns of grey-black rectangles
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3. Bellows College
Graphite on paper, wooden
plinth
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4. Bellows College
Untitled (Mirrors) as part of an Installation
entitled
Eco Studies (2011)
MEDIUM AND
TECHNIQUE
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• She uses traditional
medium of acrylic on
canvas and the modern
style of abstraction, one
of the hallmarks of 20th
century
• It can be best described
as Conceptual
Performance that is site-
specific, sculptural, and
environmental.

5. Bellows College
MEDIUM AND
TECHNIQUE
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• For the paintings, which
are all untitled and
unnumbered,Taniguchi
first draws out a grid,
then fills one 'brick' at a
time over a period of
months on the floor of
her Manila studio.While
the works differ in size,
the content—or lack
thereof—always remains
the same.
• Revealing the hand of
the artist and the
associated connotations
of labour in what at first
appears to be
mechanically produced,
the differing densities
are largely unplanned
and heighten the illusion
of textural space. At a
glance, the paintings
may resemble the grid
structures of densely
populated urban spaces
or sombre memorial
monuments.

6. Bellows College
Interpretation
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• “The grain has moved
out of its shell, out of its
material dimension, it’s
moved on to being a
more abstract
encounter.””
• Her pieces command
quiet absorption. Maria
works on simple
premises that she
translates to pieces
whose strengths lie
precisely in that
simplicity—coupled with
meticulous and
painstaking detail.

7. Conceptual Art
A term applied to works that
stresses engagement with
ideas rather than purely
perceptual encounter

8. Bellows College 8
Echo Studies
(2011)
Reflects Taniguchi’s
focuses on her decisions,
sensitivities, and process that
continuously challenge
scientific objectivity in the
creation and manipulation of
data. Employing sound,
video, painting, drawing and
installation, the artist probes
relationships among subject,
representation and process.

9. Bellows College
Untitled (Dawn’s Arms)
Video and also digital print on photo paper
MEDIUM AND
TECHNIQUE
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• Taniguchi engaged a
Filipino marble
craftsman to remake the
arms of a sculpture at
the Mies van der Rohe
Pavilion in Spain.
• Shots of the process are
interspersed with
footage of the jungle on
the island of Romblon,
while a black-and-white
photograph of the
resultant arms
accompany the video.

10. Bellows College
‘Figure Study’
A still video (2015)
Other art
forms in Echo
Studies
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• shows workers digging
for clay in a dense jungle,
with cicadas and the
clanking of their shovels
audible
• She received an Ateneo
Art Award for her solo
exhibition Echo Studies
(2011) at the Jorge B
Vargas Museum

11. Bellows College
Viewing of ‘Untitled
(Dawn’s Arms)’
Exhibit installation view
ECHO STUDIES (2011)
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‘Untitled’ (ram dram sram)
2015 die-cut paper