About the Artist
Krista Nogueras creates sculpture and installation works that explores human psyche and historicities. She works predominantly with stoneware using traditional hand building techniques as her backbone, while exploration and experimentation are fundamental to her practice. She combines surface and form with various stain and glaze painting, print and mark-making techniques. Nogueras earned her BFA from the University of the Philippines, Diliman in 2009. She has exhibited her work locally and internationally. Her first solo exhibition Lake Predicament at Artinformal Gallery was shortlisted for the Fernando Zobel Prize for Visual Arts at the 2019 Ateneo Art Awards. In 2018 Nogueras participated in a month-long residency at T U Collab in Singapore.
ARTIST STATEMENT – I have always been drawn to working with my hands, with a deep relationship with primordial and tactile materials. In an act of self-mapping, I push and pull, I tear the clay in an attempt to create a dialogue between myself and the material. Portraying my ideas conceptually and figuratively allows me to interact with the individual psyche and the depth of the human experience
Exploring the correlation between the ceramic process and life force, I experiment with forms that subscribe to polar opposites, such as fragility and stability. The great discomfort in change and growth draws me to how the clay is exposed to different stages while being subject to extreme heat.
Addressing the perspective shifts in our psychological and physical experiences of the world, I examine the human response through inquiry, preconceived notions and familiarity. My emotionally and psychologically driven themes stand on a backbone of femininity, sensuality, sexuality, and the observation of different cultures.
In order to create works that serve as a platform or portal for reflection and dialogue, I wrestle with paradoxical themes of suffering and redemption, discomfort and pleasure, life and decay: thereby exploring this dynamic between fascination and fear – the complex of inexorable opposites.
