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| Photo: Carina Altomonte |
Iya Regalario (b. 1987) is a visual artist based in Baguio City. She works across various illustration-based media such as pyrography (wood burning), mural painting, and pen and ink illustration.
Regalario’s works serve as an extension of her personal views of the world, covering themes that express her constantly evolving cultural identity as a Filipino. For Regalario, illustration has become a means of responding to issues on identity, politics, media, and the environment. She immerses on mythology, philosophy, history, and nature through a consistent expression of mythological characters, flora and fauna, and politically charged imagery in her works.
For Regalario, the essence of one's art practice lies in the development of her own identity by way of discovering her place in the world freely as an individual and as part of a greater community. For her, art is a manifestation of her current trains of thought often presented in intricate forms of visual storytelling as dreamscapes that speak more of truth than fiction.
Regalario has had several solo and group shows in the Philippines. She is the illustrator and designer of several published environmental books such as UNOS, a comic book for ICSC Agam Agenda's Climate Migration Series (2023), "An Introduction to the Pelagic Seabirds of the Philippines" (2022), and "The Ateneo Wild" coloring book series for the Ateneo Institute of Sustainability (2020). She is also the designer for the Ateneo Art Awards 2024.
Featured Artwork
Pyrography and ink on pine wood
2024
“We Are But Wind” is the fifth panel of a six-piece polyptych entitled "In the Name of Time”. It is a pyrography piece where the linework and dark details are achieved through different burning methods. The colors are ink stained on wood. On the left side of the painting is a working quartz clock.
The concept was taken from the epic of Gilgamesh where upon realizing that only the gods shall live on forever, Gilgamesh reemerged from being a vicious and corrupt leader to a spiritual being appreciative of life. The image here shows how man is stripped off of his layers, as if being blown in the wind to finally go back to his original place in the stars. This section of the narrative is preceded by the imagery of an atomic explosion amidst an exodus of wandering souls, victims of war, journeying through the sea to reach their final destination.
The full artwork can be viewed in www.iyaregalario.com
Email: iyaregalario@gmail.com
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