“Are We Alive or Just Existing”

Exhibition | Jane Cuevas and Summer De Guia

“Are We Alive or Just Existing”

“Are We Alive or Just Existing” features Jane Cuevas and Summer De Guia, in this heart-searching encounter of the self with its outward and inward ways, as they divulge their experiences, relating to each other as they seek out what it means to be alive. To exist within one’s self, moreover within a community.

For artist Jane Cuevas, her artistic process consists of journaling, scribbling and penning down thoughts, observations, and realizations from her daily life - which is then followed by her habitual routine of studying the pieces she creates. And so it goes, just as if transferring the pages of her journals to a canvas, she diligently paints, meticulous about each stroke and color selection. She does this until society calls to her, showing up for friends and fellow artists, which she appreciates incorporating in her schedule. With the intention of sincerely wanting to be a source of relatability to her audience, she actively seeks for liveliness and social interactions, even if her circumstances as an artist are often misunderstood by her peers. Cuevas utilizes these precious interactions as a form of self-exploration and weaves these events as subjects into her paintings.

Earnestly harnessing her personal experiences to be able to transform them into a visual landscape, Summer De Guia sets her artistic gaze towards female figures - often in nude - drawing inspiration from her encounters with self-worth and judgment. Explicit and deliberate figures with anamorphic proportions are what she creates to be able to communicate her message to society. Bewildered by the unbelievable prejudice and injustices inflicted on women today, coupled with society’s arbitrary standards on beauty, the female figures depicted in De Guia’s work evoke a sense of liberation for the artist from the pressures and biases that society continues to insist.

The figures in Cuevas and De Guia’s works all correspond to their musings about their day to day experiences with isolation, societal pressures as women, and their journey towards introspection - thus accumulating visual materials for their audience to contemplate. De Guia’s paintings embark on a task to highlight the perils of vulnerability within our society in order to understand how not to lose one’s self, while Cuevas’ paintings shed light on isolation, wherein her work reflect her interpersonal relationships and desires, conveying the importance of contemplation and individuality as tools for one to gain acceptance for where they are in life. To such a degree, this is their response to the question we are all bound to ask at one point, are we alive or just existing?

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