About

ARTIST STATEMENT

Idolatry is an occupational hazard for artists, and I confess to sin. Attempting to create Sacred Art, I discovered that my visualization faculties were thoroughly usurped by Western representations. I would decolonize my imagination and shake off those blonde, blue-eyed icons that populate my pantheon, but realized that I am much too fond of them to fire them.

I resurrect ancient idols and legends. Pricking an image of the Venus of Willendorf, I convert it into a pinhole camera and capture the crystallized light bejeweling the goddess, releasing her luminescent beauty. I reanimate the bulul, (Philippine rice god) with a bolt of purple lighting.

I have a personal devotion to Black Madonnas as the Catholic Church in Manila that I walked to every Sunday as a child housed a world-famous, miracle-working, 16th century icon. I find this fascinatingly ambiguous archetype to be the “mything link” between pagan goddesses, heretical sects and the orthodoxy. In one work, I stack Philippine and European Black Madonna icons, speculating that if one image is miraculous, their combined likenesses must be apocalyptic.

I describe my practice as a conceptualist with roots in art history, and a mission to chronicle how Filipino immigration is redefining what it means to be American. I investigate color as morphogenetic fields that give rise to forms. In a previous installation, I defined kayumanggi, (the caramel skin color of Philippine skin), and in current works I explore ube purple and sacred black. Formally, I aim for Minimalism but find my Baroque slip always showing. As metaphysician and self-appointed paparazza to the Divine, my art celebrates myth — “the story that never was but always is.”

I photographed hundreds Bay Area Filipino Americans to index skin color shades, scientifically averaging this hue, called “Kayumanggi,” and created a custom acrylic color through Golden Artists Colors Inc. I interrogate the semiotics of this color and its connotations of gender, class and race.

Filipino foods are both my subject and medium as carriers of identity. In the Color Palate series, cultural objects masquerade as minimalist objects. What from afar appears to be a simple color palette on closer inspection reveals itself to be Filipino ice cream—purple ube, green avocado, pink guava. These close-ups evoke extraterrestrial topographies, distant lands viewed through a telescope. As the telescope makes the distant closer, food invites and closes the gap between cultures. Like many of my works, this one is autobiographical: my Texan grandfather founded and sold what became later the largest ice cream brand in the Philippines, Magnolia.

In Stop and Smell The Tuyo I string up a single odoriferous Philippine smoked fish with mint dental floss above a filled rice cooker. It is a talismanic gesture, illustrating a Philippine myth with the culture’s characteristic sense of humor. I dramatize the value of Radical Hospitality, a hallmark of Filipino culture. In this and many of my interactive works, I invite community participation an important component of my process.

I apotheosize ube, a beloved purple yam, star of Philippine desserts. Unprepossessing on the outside, this lowly root cooks to an improbably royal purple, a molten magma of color. I deify ube’s Spirit Essence in neon, photography, sculpture and performance. Bringing the ube cult to the streets of the newly designated SOMA Pilipinas cultural district in San Francisco, I fill cracked pavement with ube jam, evoking an archeo-cultural dig.

 

BIO

O.M. France Viana is a visual artist, art historian, curator, writer and mythologist who chronicles how Filipinx immigration is redefining what it means to be American. Her art practice includes social artistry, photography, collage and installation, and mines culture for stories, puns, and archetypes. As the self-proclaimed Empress of Ube, she reimagines food as metaphor in Ube Trade live performances and serves a mean Ube Daiquiri.

She holds an MFA in Studio Art and a BA in Art History from Mills College, Oakland. Born in Manila, Philippines, she studied art in Switzerland and Spain before moving to California. She founded the Diviana Gallery, the first gallery entirely dedicated to fine art photography in Manila. She has exhibited and performed at the Asia Society of Houston, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, ProArts Gallery, Minnesota St. Projects, Gallery 6/67, Mills Museum, SOMArts, Roots Division, Kearny St. Workshop, Embark Gallery, SFAI Diego Rivera Gallery and guest curated exhibitions at the Dominican University Gallery.

She founded and runs the ARROZidency, an artist residency program nurturing FilAm artists.

Active in the Asian American community, she is a Commissioner at the Asian Art Museum, SOMA Pilipinas arts and culture committee member, board member of Philippine International Aid and Girls Leading Girls. She received a “100 Most Influential Filipina Women in the U.S.” award from the Filipina Women’s Network.

 

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Friendly Tides, Marin Civic Center, Feb-May 2023

Wonder Nurse, Teatro Brava in conjunction with Kularts Nursing These Wounds performances, 2022

Legacy of Isao Fujimoto, International House, and Manetti Shrem Museum, UC Davis,  CA, 2020

Super Sarap, Asia Society, Houston Texas, 2019

Purple Salve/Salve Morada: The Hollywood Ending, ProArts Gallery, 2018

Remythologyzing Filipino Archetypes, Dominican University Gallery, 2018

UBE Trade, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, 2018

Pistahan Pilipino, Ube Trade, YBCA grounds, 2017

12 Degrees, MFA Thesis Exhibition, Mills Art Museum, 2017

Solo Mujeres, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2017

Embark Gallery, Humor Us, September 2016

SOMarts, San Francisco, Murphy and Cadogan Awards Exhibition, September 2016

ART Night SF, 2015

Common Thread, Mills Museum, May 2015

Marin MOCA, Novato, CA Summer National Juried Exhibition, June 2012. Honorable Mention

AFFILIATIONS

Commissioner, Asian Art Museum

Board Member: Philippine International Aid, Girls Leading Girls. SOMA Pilipinas Arts and Culture Committee

Former Board Member, Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), The Hinabi Project

REVIEWS

Unless otherwise noted, all photos and text on this site © O.M. France Viana