KONTRAPUNTO
PLET BOLIPATA
ART FAIR PH 2022
STAMPITA SERIES SAINTS IN MY STUDIO: FRIDA AND DIEGO
Drawing with GB Pencil, Gesso, Acrylic, Metallic Leaf, Oil and collage on canvas
20 x 15 inches
2021
Part of Plet Bolipata’s Stampita series, this oval-shaped work presents husband-and-wife artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as secular saints, haloed and bearing other attributes of divinity. Set against the parched Mexican landscape, Frida (with her trademark unibrow) is the more dominant figure, eclipsing Diego who was known as an incorrigible womanizer and is depicted as performing his masculinity. During their lifetime, it was Diego who enjoyed fame and fortune, being part of the influential Muralism Movement. But the tides shifted to Frida’s favor in the 1960s when feminists recuperated her lagging reputation and the world began to recognize her surreal and deeply primal work as seminal. Dressed in flowers, a sash, and a purse emblazoned with the logo Museum of Modern Art where her paintings occupy pride of place, Frida is enshrined as the more enduring figure in the canon of modern art.
About the artist
Plet Bolipata (b. 1962) is a visual artist. She graduated from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States, with a degree in Computer Information Systems, in 1984. She started her career as a self-taught artist and later, took some drawing and painting classes at the Art Students League in New York. She was granted the Freeman Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in the USA in 2006 and was a recipient of the Natividad-Galang Fajardo Award from the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings in 2012. She is currently based in Manila but her studio is in the province of Zambales.
Bolipata shares that she has tried her hand at many things—-explored different mediums and techniques that included painting in oil, watercolor, sculpture, filmmaking and mosaic. She reveals that the pandemic has brought an incredible change in her work. Isolation the past two years has helped her get re-acquainted with her fondness for painting in oil. This period fraught with uncertainty has allowed her to become more daring and experimental with her style, trying her hand working with metal sheets and gold leafing. She also took to painting in watercolor and was able to overcome her fear of the medium. Isolation proved to be fruitful.