Ramona Rivera
Catalina Africa’s first solo exhibition The Etymology of Disaster, which opened last September 14, 2010 at West Gallery, ruminates on the origin of perceived tragedies, “involving moments so small, and almost secret that you hardly even notice them.” Her photographs, charts and collages depict and use everyday scenes and objects, so familiar to our landscape, yet in their ease, there is an underlying current that is seemingly just waiting to implode.
Her collection of sunset photos retrieves the image from the deep horizon of clichés and banalities. She says, “sunsets are so overused and abused that they’ve become almost sad. Yet we never tire of them, we never fail to comment on a beautiful sunset, or to take pictures of them for that matter. I find this relationship intriguing.” Shot in black and white and arranged like an organized grid on the gallery’s front wall with the word Departure in pink, the work sidesteps the obvious sentimentality associated with the sunset and instead becomes a survey, a pattern, an interplay of light and darkness.
Her other photographs – a bunch of balloons tied to a ladder by the beach, makeshift cardboard or plywood prop – houses, and letters made out of leaves, petals and small debris that spell out ‘wowowee’ – seem so natural, as if they were actually just found. Their subtle deceptiveness and vulnerability are part of a strategy that is cleverly wielded through photography.
A sense of spaced – out humor is evident in her charts and constellations. In Happy Camping, she begins with the word ‘Let’s’ and maps out endless and interconnected possibilities that can follow. In Dust, she mirrors the night sky, replacing the stars with plastic googley eyes, as if to say that the universe is watching.
Still a student at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, Ms. Africa has yet to fully grasp the potential scale of her first utterances. If she can remain steadfast and not fall into the common traps that nip young artists in the bud before they even have time to mature and blossom, then she may be someone worth watching. The works in her solo debut may be small tentative steps; but they are surely quite the opposite of a disaster.
(Catalina Africa’s ‘The Etymology of Disaster’ is on view at West Gallery until October 9, 2010.)
Sudden School 
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