Humans are naturally social beings and relationships provide us the opportunity to connect with others and share our experiences. However, when relationships become strained, it can be difficult to know how to end them. The phrase “It’s Not You, It’s Me” is often used as a way to part ways, whether as an easy excuse or a genuine attempt to take the blame.

Artist Jazel Kristin explores the ups and downs of love through her latest exhibition, “It’s Not You; It Me”. This personal love story highlights the joy and heartache that come with relationships. To create the mixed media collages, Jazel dug up old photographs, journal entries, flowers, and clothing pieces that documented her memories of past relationships. The collages are assembled in picture frames given to her by friends, adding another layer of memories to the artwork. The exhibition provides a voyeuristic experience, as viewers piece together characters and their stories.

February, being the month of art and love, features Jazel’s 11-year project “It’s Not You, It Me”. The exhibition serves as a tribute to past loves and is a celebration of both the pain and joy that come with relationships. Through her artwork, Jazel showcases her journey of healing and moving on, looking back but ultimately letting go.

Jazel Kristin is a cross-disciplinary artist known for her documentary filmmaking sensibility. Her work encompasses collage, photography, video, sound, and performance and serves as a parallel universe where she explores ambiguity, complexity, and memory. Through the use of keepsakes and mementos collected on her journeys, she creates scenes that unfold, unravel, and illuminate her experiences.

Jazel’s intermedia art provides a unique perspective on her emotions and motions, serving as a reflection of her deepest proclivities. Her work has been widely exhibited in galleries and platforms across the Philippines, Europe, and Asia. She has also completed artist residencies at Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, France, Santorini and Athens, Greece, CASA San Miguel in Zambales, Philippines, and most recently in Koganecho, Japan.

IT’S NOT YOU; IT ME

West Gallery

February 16 – March 18, 2023

A THOUSAND FEETS

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

Liu Libin (China)

Minjun Jeon (Korea)

Lee Jay En (Taiwan)

Kom & Poy (Thailand)

Jazel Kristin (Philippines)

In lieu of the annual exhibition event “Koganecho Bazaar,” we are pleased to hold the Koganecho International AIR Program 2022.
During the summer, artists from five cities were invited to create their artworks and do research in Koganecho, Japan. An exhibition will be held from October 1st (Sat) to October 16th (Sun) to present their results. The title is “Return of Exchange”. Although exchanges had been temporarily interrupted due to the pandemic since 2020, it is finally possible for Koganecho AIR to accept artists from overseas this year. We once again consider the value of exchanges between people and cultures.

Koganecho International AIR Program 2022 Exhibition “Return of exchange”
Dates | October 1st Mon – October 16th Sun, 2022
Venue| Site-A Gallery Beneath the Railways, Hachibankan, Yamamoto Apartment

Organizer | Koganecho Area Management Center
Co-organizer | Culture and Tourism Bureau, City of Yokohama
Co-operation | Luxelakes A4 Art Museum, Space Ppong, Taipei Art Center Trade Union, Chiang Mai Art Conversation, Load na Dito

LINK: https://koganecho.net/event/20221001_1016_roe

The Cultural Center of the Philippines, in collaboration with CASA San Miguel invites you to experience the Pundaquit Spring Festival online this Sunday (June 12, 2022).

The Pundaquit Festival is CASA San Miguel’s community arts program as their commitment to develop the local fishing community through its various programs including long and short-term residencies for visiting artists, performances, workshops and exhibits.

This year, the CCP through its Innovation Grants project with CASA San Miguel, proudly presents three avant-garde short films that blossomed from this fruitful collaboration.

Catch the online streaming featuring “JOSA”, “Strange Loop” and “Pluto” on the CCP and CASA San Miguel Facebook Pages.

″[Woman’s] sensibility had been educated for centuries by the influences of the common sitting room. People’s feelings were impressed on her; personal relations were always before her eyes. Therefore, when the middle-class woman took to writing, she naturally wrote novels.” — Virginia Woolf, A Room Of One’s Own.

Galerie Roberto present “A Room of One’s Own”, a women-run exhibit featuring seventeen female artists in celebration of Women’s Month. Exhibit runs until March 21, 2022.

Jazel Kristin presents JOSA, a music-art-docu film produced as part of her artist residency at Casa San Miguel Zambales. JOSA is a layered endeavor that contains multiple points of entry and touches on diverse spheres of interest. 

One can come in at the very beginning, in the prehispanic folktale, “Ina Sa Batuhan”, which inspired the work JOSA. ​​The story goes that there was once a town leader that went out hunting with his son to find food for his people. He heard a woman’s voice beckoning him and when he followed it, he found a shiny wooden statue among the rocks. The statue spoke and instructed him to bring her to his home. His wife did not take kindly to this and threw the statue into the fire. The flames jumped, burning their entire home. The statue was found unharmed. The people returned it to the place where it was first discovered and erected an altar. And they were blessed with years of prosperity. The Spaniards arrived many years later and upon hearing the story, visited the sacred place, and were surprised to see an image of the Virgin Mary. To this day, the diocese of Iba in Botolan, Zambales, is known as the Ina Poonbato Shrine. 

Perhaps your involvement is in the workshop to be done with mothers from the local community and the modern day devotees of the Ina Poon Bato shrine. With the help of her fellow resident artists at Casa San Miguel, Russ Ligtas, Lala Pavilando, Geric Cruz and Micah Pinto, participants will be tasked to create “milagros,” which means “miracles” in both Filipino and Spanish, votives made of recycled aluminum tin, specifically chosen by the artist as the activity for the workshop. These folk charms are often displayed and sold in shrines or other religious sites as offerings for healing and other prayer intentions. They are often found in Mexico and other Latin American countries and were said to have been introduced by Spanish colonizers. 

These two layers that frame the starting point of the project JOSA bring forth notions of indigenous beliefs and traditions that stand the test of time, and in what the late Alice Guillermo called its “layers of significations in displacements and ironies”. We see the modern effects of colonization and its reach across nations and centuries, and the “double subjection of women under colonialism,” also said by Alice Guillermo. It reminds us of the Philippines’ deep connections and parallels with other countries, Mexico in particular, via the galleon trade, and our love for storytelling and mythmaking. We can think of various other complexities such as the marginalization of folk craft by fine art, local vs global, communal vs the empowered single male figure, and religious tourism vs the art market, among others.

At the midpoint of JOSA, one can enter as a spectator in the procession/parade to be participated in by the mothers who joined in the workshop and the artist, with accompanying music by the Republic marching band, with music composed by one of their graduates, Gab Mendoza. The procession, a common sight in Filipino towns, will be appropriated to allow the local community of San Antonio, Zambales, to connect with the multifaceted cultural institution that has been there for almost three decades now. It is also meant as a celebration of the mothers of the community, and as thanksgiving for the Virgin. Even the timing of the parade and the route were specially chosen by the artist because of their resonance with the community. Sundown or sunset represents the end of the workday, a time for setting aside worries and celebrating what the day has brought. It is also a special time of day known as the golden hour, a favorite in cinematography, where the artist’s roots lie. The short procession will begin at Casa San Miguel, passing Evangelista Street, the street that also leads to the local seaside, and ending at a gated but abandoned lot with the cement remnants of what used to be a home. 

Or perhaps you might be drawn in by artworks seemingly left behind in the ruins along the main road going to the beach. The site-specific installation will remain for one day and will be a community shrine of sorts, presenting the milagros created in the workshop along with three artworks by Jazel Kristin. The mixed media pieces are from the artist’s 2018 exhibition Ego Altar, held in what was known as the Anita Magsaysay-Ho Gallery of Casa San Miguel. The collage on wood artworks, created three and eight years prior, are composed of images of food arranged to depict portraits. The images resemble icons of saints or the Virgin, with familiar details like a frontal facing center perspective, with halos or the sacred heart and gold embellishments. Each piece will be given to one of the three participating mothers of varying generations and states of life. The giving away of her art is not the first for Jazel Kristin but is a continuation of the artist’s project called “Free Art For Free,” where, with each full moon and new moon, she leaves art in public spaces for people to retrieve, created as a way to give back and share how art was able to be her source of strength and survival.

The central point of the project JOSA, also blanketed by two actions, still speaks of communal and faith-based rituals and beliefs, this time through the traditions of marches, processions, shrines, offerings, and even, bayanihan. At the same time, it also brings forth the ideas of discard/refuse versus collectibles through the abandoned home, the unsold artworks made of found photographs, and the metal scraps used to create the milagros. It also presents to us dichotomies of artistic collaboration against solitary work, of beliefs related to the concept of time and its passing, of private alongside communal spaces, and motherhood and domesticity. 

At its most probable, one will only see the final work, a short film directed by Jazel Kristin and presented online, depicting the multiple engagements and expositions within the JOSA project. Here one can listen to the experiences of the three mothers firsthand through interviews by the artist. A maximal view of the procession and the site-specific installation can be appreciated alongside detailed shots of the artworks and the people involved in the project. We are reminded again of time and place as mentions of the pandemic and its hardships are shared, and notions of faith and belief run parallel through mentions of gratitude and blessings are said in the same breath. 

All these phases of JOSA, straddling multiple art forms and artistic methods, were conceptualized by Jazel Kristin over many months, a product of her concerns and anxieties during the pandemic and adjacent lockdowns and her long-term investigations on how to bring art to people outside the four walls of a gallery or exhibition space. She shares how she thought of the common saying “nakakain ba ang art?” and how it resonated with the scene in the folk tale where the husband was tasked to look for food and instead brought home the wooden statue. 

JOSA was a way for the artist to break down or break away from the barriers of her studio practice. But perhaps it’s also a reminder for all women to go out of their private spaces or homes, spaces where they were relegated to, spaces where plights are shared in secret or only among those deemed to understand; to find sites for celebration, devotion, and reckoning with a larger community. Again we are reminded by Alice Guillermo, “With the development of women’s art comes a vision of social transformation. Women with the capacity of nurturers of life and, as first teachers, with the role of custodians of the transformative values of society have a crucial part in social change.” And so we have our penultimate layer, that of art and faith and their analogous and longstanding promise of emancipation.

Director / Screenwriter / Artist: Jazel Kristin

Curator: Rica Estrada

Script Consultant: Elmer Gatchalian

Production Manager: Yel Mempin

Local Liaison: Gelmer Tamayo

W2 PRODUCTIONS

Production Manager / Photographer: Jeremy Caisip

Assistant Director: Marj Rojas

Director of Photography: Jen Kyla

Cinematographer: Reine Bantang

Editor: Georgia Chan

Music Composer: Gabriel Art Mendoza

PUNDAQUIT VIRTUOSI

REPUBLIC BRASS BAND

CASA SAN MIGUEL

Artistic Director / Founder: Alfonso Bolipata

CULTURAL CENTER OF THE PHILIPPINES

WATCH JOSA movie trailer: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/687361181

As part of my full moon rituals, I set my intention by freeing my Art – out of the confines of a gallery space and into the openness of the street. I’m setting it free by giving it away for free – a present/presence to anyone who discovers it. The artwork is set free randomly, whoever finds it can keep it.

My hope is that someone who frequents the streets – a garbage collector, a construction worker, a tricycle driver, a vendor, or a kid, sees my artwork and brings it home.

The framed artworks are updated handmade photo collages from my very first show – T.R.I.P (To Rest In Peace) 2005. The artworks were left randomly around my neighborhood in Manila and during my artist residency in CASA San Miguel, Zambales.

𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇: 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐀 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐀 𝐒𝐀 𝐌𝐆𝐀 𝐉𝐎𝐒𝐀
Presented by Jazel Kristin

 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄
Parade from CASA San Miguel to the Beach

 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍
Sunday, Nov 7, 2021, 5PM
Manila Time

 𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆
Republic Band and Pundaquit Virtuosi

𝑷𝒊𝒆𝒄𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒚 𝑷𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒕 𝑽𝒊𝒓𝒕𝒖𝒐𝒔𝒊:

Ave Maria by Gabriel Art Mendoza
Fandango by Gabriel Art Mendoza
Spring by Antonio Vivaldi

 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖

Jazel Kristin presents JOSA, an art-music-docu film in line with her continuing artist residency at Casa San Miguel Zambales. JOSA is a layered endeavor that contains multiple points of entry and touches on diverse spheres of interest.

One can come in at the very beginning through the pre-hispanic folktale, “Ina Sa Batuhan,” which inspired the work JOSA. Or perhaps your involvement is in the workshop to be done with mothers from the local community and devotees of the Ina Poon Bato shrine, connecting indigenous folklore with modern religion. At the midpoint of JOSA, one can enter as a spectator in the procession/parade to be participated in by the mothers who joined in the workshop and the artist, with accompanying music composed by Casa San Miguel’s Gab Mendoza and played by the Republic marching band. Or perhaps you might be drawn in by the artist’s site-specific installation in an empty lot along the main road going to the beach, showcasing the milagros created in the workshop. The final work, a short film directed by Jazel Kristin, will be presented online and will showcase the multiple engagements and expositions within the JOSA project.

JOSA was a way for the artist to break down or break away from the barriers of her studio practice. But it is also a reminder for all women to go out of their private spaces or homes, spaces where they were relegated to, spaces where plights are shared in secret or only among those deemed to understand; to find sites for celebration, devotion, and reckoning with a larger community.

 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
CASA San Miguel
Barangay San Miguel
Bayan ng San Antonio
Cultural Center of the Philippines

Stop Over: Virtual Studio Visit no. 3

With Jazel Kristin and Fuyuka Shindo
Moderated by Zeus Bascon
September 25 (Sat) at 2:00 PM (Philippines) | Zoom

Stop Over: Virtual Studio VisitsAugust-November 2021“Stop Over” facilitates casual conversations to learn artists’ and practitioners’ daily experiences and practices in relation to their specific locations and situations – home, studio and neighborhood. “Stop Over” convenes individuals and groups from physically distant places, and it hopes to be a site to pause, to question, to re-fresh and to-energize ourselves by imagining relationships/links/paths that we might not see otherwise.

Initiated by Load na Dito Supported by The Japan Foundation, Manila, TOGETHER WE DESIGN and Textile Art Museum.Ph

Jazel Kristin’s sensibility as a documentary filmmaker pervades her cross-disciplinary practice that encompasses collage, photography, video, sound, and performance. As alternative repositories of the keepsakes she collects throughout her journeys, she sets the scene for these mementos to unfold, unravel, and illumine—all in directorial fashion. Whether as vivisections of her most pervasive proclivities or as cartographic abstractions of her motions and emotions, her intermedia art ultimately serves as the parallel universe wherein she navigates through ambiguity, complexity, and memory at her own pace and according to her own terms. Her work has been exhibited extensively in the Philippines’ major galleries and platforms, and has been showcased in exhibitions across Europe and Asia. She has completed residencies with Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, France by the Mairie de Paris (2010), and in Santorini & Athens, Greece (2015) and in CASA San Miguel in Zambales, Philippines (2013, 2017, 2019 & 2021).