Anna Bautista is a young artist based in Manila, whose works mostly tackle on the takeover of consumerism and Pop Culture in modern day society.

What are the usual themes in your work? 

The recurring themes in my work in a nutshell would have to be appropriation in mostly consumerism and Pop-culture. I am very intrigued by them individually as two separate entities, as well as their relation together and how they affect one another.

My work aims to reflect just that.

Tell us about your latest project/s or anything you are currently working on.

Aside from painting, I am keeping myself busy by still designing for activations that we have over at our companies CC:Concepts & UNKNWN. It’s been a wild ride for the events industry as we cannot hold physical events for the time being, so online activations are our main focus at the moment.

I am also working on a new clothing collection as well as another collaboration which are set to come out soon under our company named SupportYourFriends that I co-own with a couple of my colleagues.

Right now I am also just about to graduate college, even if it means it would just be virtually for now.

Additionally, we are trying to pivot plans in regards to our new Non-Govermental Organization which was supposedly set to be launched before the lockdown in Manila happened. So now, we are just finding our ways around how we could make it an impactful one still even without social gatherings as we would want to be able to be of active help already to our beneficiary.

From the Goyard Vine, 2020. Anna Bautista

Essentially, storyboarding in film is the part in the pre-production process that roughly visualizes how you would like your shot to look like/what your shot would like to invoke to your audience. I apply this in my case to making my paintings.

I sketch out ideally how I’d like my painting to come out like. What angle should the subject matter be positioned in, what other objects I would like to include & what kind of vibe I would want it to have. I make various studies until I am satisfied with my sketch. After which, I take some reference photos if it is necessary and then I finally sketch my thoughts onto a blank canvas.

When working for an exhibition, how do you know which work to include?

I usually keep a notebook with me wherein I jot down ideas & doodles, no matter how random or silly they are-- in hopes that maybe one day they would be of use to me. Having said, I usually unearth & go through these little scribbles and see if there’s any recurring setting or theme in them that I may connect more subjects to. I then fixate myself on this given theme and think of other scenarios or objects that would be nice to include in the same collection. I make sure to mindlessly write everything down in order for me not to overthink it because it might kill the train of thought. Finally, I then narrow the list down & pick what I think would work best as actual paintings.

Name some of the artists who have influenced you in your practice.

On the top of my head, the people who have greatly inspired me in my practice would be Jean Michel Basquiat, Phoebe Philo, H.R. Ocampo, Karl Lagerfeld, Fernando Amorsolo, Anna Wintour, Tinker Hatfield, Fernando Zobel, Olafur Eliasson, Carl Jan Cruz, Ramon Orlina, Barbara Kruger, Daniel Arsham & Es Devlin.

Among your works, which of them could be called your favorite? 

 For this specific collection, it would have to be “From The Goyard Vine” a painting on a 4x3 canvas which was done in acrylic that mimics the iconic Goyard brand pattern on a grapevine.

This is my favorite, mainly because I really did not expect it to turn out or look like it’s finished product. I vividly remember sketching it and thinking, “Oh no, things are gonna get really ugly” especially because it just seemed so tedious to do with all the texture it was going to be needing. At one point, I even thought about not even pushing through with the idea anymore and just erase the sketches so I could use it for another painting idea instead. Thankfully I didn’t because it turned out to be my favorite & most fulfilling piece.

I’m also really happy that a part of the proceeds of this piece along with the other paintings will go to the farmers of Surigao Del Norte that were very much affected due to the rules implemented by lockdown through the organization LokalLab.