After a year-long absence, Elmer Dumlao impresses us again with his artistic vision of life through the most natural of lenses
Words by John Lillywhite | JO Magazine
“WHEN YOU TALK over the phone, or with your back turned, it’s very hard to get a sense of the person you’re talking to,” says Elmer Dumlao, “because so much is unspoken—shown through facial features, and especially in the eyes.”
It’s fair to say Dumlao has a bit of a thing about eyes. His last exhibition more than a year ago, also at Zara Gallery, was titled Through the Eyes of Elmer Dumlao. In essence, it featured the Filipino artist’s unique impressions of fifteen years in Jordan, referencing its history, culture, and landscape. It was after this exhibition that Dumlao began to reflect on the connection between perception and feeling “on not just what you see, but how you see.”
With that in mind, the first thing he did was buy satellite dishes. “I wanted to create these convex eyes, perhaps with papier-mâché, but I had no idea how to do it,” the artist explains “Then one day I was walking close to home, and I saw a shop with satellite dishes lined up outside, and I was so happy.”
In Eye to Eye, currently at Zara Gallery, these dishes transform into bright, shining corneas, each with their own corresponding emotion or idea: love, the soul, purity, life, freedom, status, choice, hope, challenge, and of course vision are all explored, be it through mirrors, a swirling labyrinth, or egg shells—1,173 of them, to be exact.
“They sort of remind me of the beginning, the existing, and the end,” says Dumlao, pointing to the installation titled “Life” that’s covered in the shells. “But that’s just one interpretation.” With the exception of “Love,” it’s one of the only installations to have a textured finish, and ridges. Next to it a half-eye-installation protrudes from the ground, the word “hope” written on the floor beside it. It’s not entirely clear whether the eye is rising like a sunrise, or sinking into the ground but, like most others, its ambivalent meaning is superseded by the attraction to its striking, lacquer-like finish.
“Pure,” concentric circles of light and dark blue with a mirror in the middle as an iris of sorts, has perhaps the clearest intention. “It was inspired by the eyes people hang in their houses here to take away negative energy,” says the artist, referring to the blue evil-eye charms thought to offer protection. “At home I put a powerful magnet behind this eye and threw two kilograms of paperclips at it,” recalls the artist. “It attracted them immediately … I wish I’d video recorded it.”
But the most interesting eye of them all, “Love,” is the one where the nails are very much still stuck, resembling something like scleral acupuncture. “The middle of the eye is serene,” explains Dumlao, “but around it there is much pain. The idea is that love is not possible without sacrifice—It’s inspired by the softness and the hardness of unconditional love.” For Dumlao the eyes aren’t so much a window into the soul, as a window into everything.
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