paglipas (impermanence)
2023
Triptych screen print (11, 9 and 6 layers) on rag paper
each 55 x 73 cm
artist statement
I created this work in 2023 without a fully realized vision, just initially inspired by a leaking faucet. I watched the water shift across three states: the valve turned fully open, adjusted just right, or left to a slow, dripping leak. To translate this into an abstract interpretation of landscapes from the Philippines, I decided to go with the image of a waterfall.
In November 2025, my father passed. Just two months later, while going through past archives for a residency application, I stumbled upon this series again. Now, with new eyes, I look at this archive not as an unresolved experiment, but an involuntary rehearsal for grief.
The overflowing waterfall. Grief can arrive with an intensity that is too much for us to handle.
The calm water waterfall. After losing someone, eventually, the intensity softens. I return to ordinary routines, but it doesn't mean that I miss my dad any less. It's just grief and living have begun to occupy the same space.
The dried waterfall. It's really difficult to realize that someone who was part of my world is no longer physically there. Here, when the water stopped flowing, it leaves behind a landscape that was shaped by the water that once passed through it. It is the possibility of remaining with an absence without having to fill it. It also leaves us with the reality of change and the question of how to continue living when someone (or something) irreplaceable is gone.
These states don't follow a linear order (before, during, after). I can feel at peace one day, and overwhelmed the next. I can remember my dad with joy, then suddenly feel the weight of his absence.
Through these three waterfalls, in different states of flow, I explore the changing nature of grief: its overwhelming intensity, its quieter presence, and the stillness that follows when something once familiar is no longer there. These conditions continue to shift over time but also can coexist. It's not about overcoming loss, but about learning to live alongside the fact that everything changes.
Paglipas (tagalog: Impermanence) reflects on impermanence: accepting that things change without requiring ourselves to stop remembering, missing, or loving what has passed.
