Art Verité Gallery

Longing for Meaning and Sense of Becoming: Notes on Gretel Balajadia’s exhibit titled “Existentia”

“Existentia” is to find meaning and sense of being. And for Gretel Balajadia, she found this at home that brought her safety, sense of belonging and connection, and the wisdom to value and express gratitude.

“Existentia” presents the images of Gretel’s childhood, especially the emotional attachments to her family and home where she grew up in rural and pre-industrial Angono. 

This rootedness and attachment to place that palpitate on her latest works correlates to her deep longing for something unearthed and undiscovered, providing an important role in recreating a sense of meaning in her life, psyche and emotional fabric. 

Somehow “Existentia” details the theme of regaining bond from disconnection, which Gretel presented in her last solo exhibit titled “Opaque Reality” where she explored the images and psyche of the inevitability in life, and consequently offers the overcoming of fear as possible tool for continuity and regeneration– to find meaning and form from desolation and destruction, and to enhance human beings’ chances of survival, continuity and reproduction.

A replica/installation of her family’s house sets the ambiance of the “Existentia” exhibit, with light switching on and off. Here, the effects of light are not only aural and visceral but auditory also as it presents the house as a breathing, throbbing and living thing. The house cues the physical environment of Gretel’s self-definition and sense of security and belonging.

Gretel’s other images manifest and offer ways of defining home poetically and concretely. It is memory and conversation with her grandfather. A photo op with her brother behind the wall. It is sitting idly on her grandmother’s lap who took care of her when she was young. A groufie with cousins and friends. Baptism in the church with her parents and godparents. And poignantly, exhibiting the remains of animals which her deceased father  gathered as a hobby and artifacts collector.

In “Existentia,” home is where you grew up in and the familiar sights, sounds, tastes, and smells that are as familiar to you. For Gretel, it is a home that nourishes her sense of becoming. Where she feels secured and loved, home is where connection takes away loneliness and gives her the experience of being known, of being her, thus reaffirming her presence and existence.     

-Richard R. Gappi