Geraldine Javier

Silverlens New York is honored to present State of the Nations, the first U.S. solo exhibition of renowned Philippine artist Geraldine Javier. Javier’s exhibition.

“Every morning the artist Geraldine Javier with her dog Freya starts work by walking out into her garden to gather leaves, flowers and occasionally bits of bark. “Garden” here may not be the most accurate word. She lives in an old farm 2.3 hectares (5.7 acres) large, and now calls herself an “artist-farmer”.

Over the last four years eco-printing has been so consuming a medium or process that she has had no time to paint. Eco-printing means to press the sap or pigment of leaves, roots, flowers and bark into paper or fabric. “I hope the audience will delight in nature and share my concern at the damage of it,” says Javier. Employing and supporting those people who live in her compound or the local barangay and who embroider (ten on this project), garden, or otherwise make the work possible is central to her. “It is very important to me that this work is very handmade and made with natural materials,” says Javier, “It is important to show that things like this can only be made by hand.”

Javier finds hope also when she sees people and communities working with nature, setting up community kitchens, growing organic vegetables, working for democracy, making things by hand, caring for others. As Rebecca Solnit recently suggested, “Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war.””

—Tony Godfrey